Author: Sarah Malik

Categories
Blog

What’s the Deal with the After movies?

via teenvogue.com

In 2013, Anna Todd wrote After on Wattpad as a Harry Styles fanfiction and later went on to publish it in 2014. The story follows college students Tessa and Hardin through a tumultuous relationship with a lot of pushing and pulling. Many people have heard of the movie After, but not as many people know that a sequel, After We Collided, was released this year, and there are many reasons for this. The After movies are movies you watch to feel better about yourself, not because they’re super inspiring, but because they make you thank your lucky stars that your lives are not like theirs.

The first After movie was met with reviews that mainly consisted of “I want my two hours back” or “I want a refund” and the second movie has similar feedback. The public didn’t even know the movie was in production as nobody really expected it, however we now know that movie three will most likely be produced after the pandemic is over, so there’s no escaping this series.

After has a whopping 19% on Rotten Tomatoes, and After We Collided has 17%. The movies are, like most Wattpad stories turned published books, not that great. Tessa is a college student who has experienced basically nothing because she loves studying and reading books and all that, and Hardin is a “bad boy” who has tattoos, multiple friends, and most likely a criminal record. Yes, it’s that trope. The movies are very cliché, not straying from the story at all. The bad boy falls in love with an innocent nerd who’s only had one boyfriend her whole life. The bad boy has really mean friends who are out to get the nerdy girl. The nerdy girl has been sheltered her whole life. You get it. It’s like Grease without the songs and amazing character arcs. I watched the second movie and wondered why scriptwriters didn’t veer off track from the books. Certainly they did that for The Princess Diaries and Harry Potter and it worked out fine, so why not try to salvage the good parts of the movie?

The cast is one of the good parts of the movies. Hardin Scott is played by Hero Fiennes Tiffin and Tessa Young is played by Josephine Langford. Although both actors haven’t acted much, their acting is very parallel with the characters. They behave like young adults. People have argued that the casting wasn’t well done, however, Hero portrayed a dumb college student who is too full of himself well, and Josephine played a booksmart nerd who is also too full of herself. The acting is very mediocre, but given the nature of the script, this was expected from the beginning when movie rumors began. The cast did well with what they were provided, and I hope to see them go on to portray better roles. Truth is, Tessa and Hardin are poorly written characters, but what Josephine and Hero have done with the characters is acceptable enough.

Watch both After movies when you’re having a bad day and I promise it’ll either make you sink into your couch from secondhand embarrassment or make you cry laughing (even at the sad parts).

For more content check back to its-bananas.com!

Categories
Blog

Everything We Know About Olivia Wilde’s New Movie, Don’t Worry, Darling

via geekgirlauthority.com

Olivia Wilde, director of the 2019 film Booksmart, has a new movie in the works called Don’t Worry, Darling. The cast has already been selected, and production began in mid October. The movie, although still very much a mystery surrounding the plot and details, is a psychological thriller that takes place in the 1950’s about the disturbing truth of a seemingly perfect family. 

Rumors of the cast began circulating social media as early as September and there wasn’t much time between the initial rumors and Wilde confirming the movie and a few cast members on her Instagram. The cast includes Florence Pugh, Chris Pine, Gemma Chan, Kiki Layne, and Harry Styles. All of these actors have received recognition for their outstanding performances. Fans of these A-list celebrities were thrilled that rumors were confirmed by Wilde herself, and looked forward to catching glimpses of the production as filming began. Other cast members from the ensemble include Nick Kroll and Douglas Smith amongst others. 

As mentioned before, the details of this movie are pretty vague. We know that Pugh and Styles play a couple, their names Alice and Jack respectively, and Chan and Layne play characters named Shelley and Margaret respectively. Any new information about the plot is still to come.

The bad news is that similar to The Batman (2022), production was halted in the first week of November due to someone on set testing positive for COVID-19. Sources have reported that the member who tested positive was not someone from the essential cast, however for precaution, the production has been stopped for 14 days. It should pick up once more after all the necessary testing has taken place and it is deemed safe to gather. Wilde is taking no risks when it comes to this virus as multiple paparazzi pictures from the set have shown crew and cast members, including Styles and Pugh, wearing masks when not filming. Their trailers are also socially distanced.

While Don’t Worry, Darling and its details are still up in the air, an unauthorized script for the movie has joined in the circulation. The script includes both dialogue and story, however, it has not been confirmed by either Wilde or Katie Silberman, who co-wrote the script. It also includes names for characters that don’t exist in the actual movie.

We excitedly wait for more information to unfold as production begins again. There is no official release date for Don’t Worry, Darling just yet, but we can expect some more hiccups and delays as production continues due to the coronavirus.

For more news and entertainment check out its-bananas.com.

Categories
Blog

Beach Read: A Review

via booktrib.com

As the pandemic continues, I have found it very difficult to focus on tasks, no matter how small they are. Due to online schooling, I’ve noticed a decline in my engagement in my hobbies as most of time is taken over by papers, exams, and assignments that are just not feasible to do in one night. As I grow closer and closer to the home stretch, I feel some of that weight being lifted off my shoulder momentarily, but I know that finals week is always somewhere out there, looming over the horizon. The current situation of life forces us to not consider our mental health, and it’s understandable if you’ve felt the same way. For me, breaking out of this hazy headspace, even for just a few hours, was reading Emily Henry’s New York Times Bestseller: Beach Read.

From the title, you may assume it’s another one of those cheesy romances that people read to escape their unforgiving reality. While there are elements of romance in the novel, there are a lot of themes that I find relatable to current life that project to be bigger than the romance between any two characters. January Andrews is a writer who has moved into her late father’s beach house in a small town, and she’s struggling to write her next novel as the deadline inches closer and closer. While her agent is understanding, being a writer is January’s career and she depends on the money. The more she procrastinates on her project, the more broke she becomes. January deals with a lot of mental health issues as she grieves her father’s death and learns things about his life that makes her suspect he wasn’t the truthful man she always looked up to. The novel focuses on the shadows of seemingly perfect relationships and the realization that nothing is ever permanent or perfect.

The deuteragonist is Gus Everett, January’s neighbor, who is also a writer. It’s not January’s first time meeting him as they were rivals in college and always critiqued each other’s work, sometimes very scathingly. They’re vastly different writers; January primarily writes happy-ever-afters while Gus writes cynical thrillers that he spends months researching for. The content they write should give you an idea as to what types of people they are.

January forms an aversion towards Gus immediately after meeting him many years later, however, they both soon realize they differ from their previous selves, and their experiences between college and the present day have affected them in ways that seem impossible to heal from. Gus contributes to the themes of loss and family, and as the story progresses, readers learn why he’s so cold to relationships. He’s grown to be an isolated, skeptical man, yet he feels no need to change this. He believes that this is how the world goes. There are no happy-ever-afters.

Although the two characters have their own personal stormy clouds above their heads, the rest of the town they live in is the epitome of cheerfulness. Overall, it has a Schitt’s Creek vibe and it’s very delicately written to counter the turmoils Gus and January face. Henry creates a powerful distinction between the two worlds in the book. She explains the fear of being stuck in one place as the world around you continues to progress, and I believe that a lot of us understand this feeling, especially these days. The book demonstrates that while happy-ever-afters can be rare, there are many moments in life to cherish, which are called the happy-for-nows. The purpose is not to forget the past, but to take your time healing  from it and then use that energy to invest in something important: your happiness.

This book is a perfect read for a bad day. There is romance that takes place in the form of the enemies-to-lovers trope, but it’s not unrealistic or cliché. Henry has done an excellent job writing this story and delving into personal struggles people face without romanticizing them. Buy a copy of Beach Read here!

For more reviews and entertaining content check back to its-bananas.com.

Categories
Blog

Looking Back at the Life of John Lennon

via hurriyetdailynew.com

From a young age, John Lennon showed a lot of promise as a talented musician. At the age of 21, Lennon and his bandmates from the Beatles made their first televised appearance in America, and kicked off their careers. The band took the world by storm in the 60s, winning countless Grammys and one Academy Award for their excellence as musicians. In their short time together, the Beatles managed to become the most successful band in the world, and continue to reign as the best selling artist of all time. They comfortably sit at the top of the list along with Elvis Presley and Eagles. Their most notable works include the songs “Hey Jude”, “Here Comes The Sun”, and “Yesterday.”

The Beatles parted ways in 1970, and similar to the rest of his bandmates, Lennon released his debut album as a solo artist later that year. Plastic Ono Band was produced by Lennon, his wife Yoko Ono, and Phil Spector. Spector is also responsible for producing record breaking albums for artists such as Cher, Tina Turner, and the Beatles themselves. The album was successful, however, his sophomore album, Imagine, sold more units, becoming one of his most famous works. According to Chartmasters, Lennon’s fifth studio album Double Fantasy was the second most successful album the artist released.

Alongside releasing music, Lennon and Ono, who he often collaborated with, were notable activists for peace. They were publically anti war and often protested peacefully against violence in America. The Vietnam War continued until the mid 70’s, and young men were drafted into the war despite the overwhelming majority of America’s youth resisting the war. In 1969, Yoko and Lennon held Bed-ins, in which they stayed in bed fully clothed for two weeks, and they hoped their peaceful way of protesting the war encouraged others to do so. This was met with some backlash because the public criticized the protest of being ineffective, however, it did not discourage the couple. Lennon also supported the Black Panther movement and wrote songs to show his support, including “Power to the People.”

In 1972, the couple released an album titled “Sometime In New York City” which included political songs advocating for the rights for many minorities, including Black Americans and Native Americans. The album also included their strong opinion against the persecution of the Irish and their anti war beliefs. This album was not successful, but it did not stop Lennon and Yoko from continuing their activism. Lennon wrote “Give Peace a Chance” for Plastic Ono Band to establish his stance as an anti violence artist.

Although his songs were political, Lennon didn’t affiliate with any particular political group. Listeners of Imagine and Sometime In New York City argued about his ties to Marxism and Socialism, however, Lennon was inspired by liberal views and then transitioned them into his own beliefs about human rights over any political party. He was also believed to be an atheist.

Lennon was famously a feminist and worked to destroy toxic masulinity that revolved around being too “manly” to advocate for women. He wrote “Woman” to acknowledge and to convey his kudos towards the women of the world, praising them abundantly for being strong. He talked about the song and the meaning he wanted to convey to the world in his final interview before his assassination, stating:

And the Woman song is to Yoko, but it’s to all women. And, because my role in society – or any artist or poet’s role – is to try to express what we all feel….And that’s what I’m tryin’ to express on behalf of all the men to all the women, through my own feelings about women – when it dawned on me, ‘God! It is the other half of the sky’ as the late-great Chairman MacDougal said, right? I mean, they are the other half of the sky, and without them there is nothing. And without us there’s nothing. There’s only the two together creating children, creating society…We’re all human. And, I am tryin’ to say it to Yoko, but to all women, you know? On behalf of all men, in a way. If that’s taken it too much on myself, I feel that artists are that – they’re reflections of society… Mirrors.

– John Lennon, December 8th, 1980

Lennon knew he had a platform, and he used it to his advantage. His fans followed in his footsteps in upholding his legacy as an activist and continue to look up to him. Lennon proved that he was not only a member of a boyband who wrote cliché love songs, but also a man with beliefs he held to be true. He paved the way for future rock artists and activists.

Yoko Ono continues to be an activist for peace. John Lennon would have turned 80 on October 9, 2020.

For more content check back to its-bananas.com.