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jo is Currently Reading

jo mo is currently reading

Winter's Bone

by Daniel Woodrell

bookshelves: dramarama, made-into-movie, adoptee-or-orphan, family, thriller, tomboy, tough-heroine, ugly-story, reviews, currently-reading, read-in-german, own, mystery

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jo mo said: "

I wouldn’t say the film improved upon the book, but rather, it revealed the limits of my own imagination, which is what good adaption can do. The film imagined the abject poverty of the Ozarks with more dignity and respect than I could. Characters I thought of as monsters in the book came through with such humanity on screen—their restraint told you so much about who they were and their strict code of conduct. The mythic overtones I gathered from the book—Ree Dolly as a modern-day Antigone—were fully captured in Granik and Rossellini’s treatment. [ article ]

It was a relief and, ultimately, a pleasure to discover that the film avoids all of the inherent pitfalls of its premise. Though it is driven by the poverty and insularity of Ree's world, Winter's Bone neither romanticizes that world, nor does it make it exotic. It achieves this by locking us thoroughly into Ree's point of view--to which end Jennifer Lawrence's unflinching performance is an integral component without which the film would have failed completely.

Ree spends the film tramping up and down hills and through forests as she tries to determine where her father is and why the local criminal element wants to stop her asking questions about him, and an important subplot involves her teaching her younger brother and sister important survival skills--how to hunt, clean their kill, and prepare food from it--but Winter's Bone is subtle enough, and Ree, who takes the world she shows us for granted, is a powerful enough presence at its center, that the film never feels like a guided tour. As she draws closer to the criminals who know where her father is, Ree is repeatedly confronted with the attitude that she has done something wrong by working with the law and going outside the community, even though that community is happy to see her and her siblings thrown out of their home. What's interesting about Winter's Bone is that Ree herself doesn't dispute the notion that what she's done is wrong, but rather insists that her obligations to her brother and sister take precedence over her obligation to remain stone-faced in the face of threats from law enforcement. The film, in the end, isn't one about a rebel or an outsider, but about a girl who plays by the rules and uses them to her advantage, even when those rules are designed to keep her down and seem cruel and restrictive to the audience. The arc of the film is Ree's acceptance--as the abandonment of both her parents becomes more obvious, and as her dreams of escaping to the army grow more distant--that she will likely never leave her home, and this is depicted as neither a tragedy nor a triumph, more an acceptance of the fact that though Ree could have a better life, she is well-suited, through breeding and upbringing, to the one she has, and can even be happy in it, at least for a time.
[ asking the wrong questions / abigail nussbaum][ unfortunate metaphors ](less)"

progress:

(page 31 of 193)
— Mar 22, 2013 04:49am

Mar 21, 2013 09:06am · see review

jo mo is currently reading

The Complete Sherlock Holmes

by Arthur Conan Doyle

bookshelves: classics, currently-reading, 2013, historic, male-pov, mystery, short-stories, made-into-movie

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progress:

(page 75 of 1077)
"finished: a study in scarlet" — Mar 15, 2013 06:33am

Feb 19, 2013 06:13am

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jo's Recent Updates

jo mo voted for 3 books on the list CBCA 2013 - Older Readers Vote on this list »
May 22, 2013 06:16am · like
jo mo rated a book 1 of 5 stars Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1) by Orson Scott Card	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
[image] shitlisted this is why.
May 21, 2013 04:08am · see review
jo mo wants to read Dreams of Gods & Monsters (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #3) by Laini Taylor (Goodreads Author)	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
May 20, 2013 01:41pm
jo mo wants to read Love and Lament by John M. Thompson	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
May 19, 2013 04:02pm
jo mo rated a book 4 of 5 stars Unspoken (The Lynburn Legacy, #1) by Sarah Rees Brennan (Goodreads Author) read in September, 2012	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
3.75/5 - 4/5 suspenseful. complex characters. an awkward, unromantic romance. and oh, what an ending! o.0 my contest entries (click to zoom): [image] [image] [image] [image]
May 18, 2013 03:21pm · see review
jo mo wants to read These Broken Stars (Starbound, #1) by Amie Kaufman (Goodreads Author)	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
May 18, 2013 03:14pm
jo mo liked Tahlia Newland's review of Colandra's Crusade: " The idea behind this book is an interesting one - basically a vision of an afterlife bureaucracy involved in moving souls up, or down, the spiritual ladder, and a soul looking for its comatose body - but it doesn't succeed as well as it could. The... " Read more of this review »
May 17, 2013 02:43pm · see review
jo mo made a comment on Eleanor's review of Rhubarb "Eleanor wrote: "I would start with Jasper Jones :-)" gotcha!"
May 17, 2013 04:27am · see review
jo mo liked Cecile's review of Friday Brown: " First impression after reading: Short review to come. I just need time to, um, stop crying. Real review: There are no words. Not nearly enough ones, or right ones, anyway. Mostly because this book left me feeling…empty. Worn out. Sobbing. Wishing I... " Read more of this review »
May 16, 2013 05:27am · see review

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jo’s Writing

watchlist (Arts & Photography)

3 chapters — updated Feb 20, 2013 03:27pm

Description: currently only a listing about anything worth mentioning i've watched, ranging from tv shows, mini-series, dramas and movies. will be updated continuously ...