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You know what book and movie were really, really, really good? Holes.


(Like it? I just posted it on Tumblr!)

It’s just so clever. And the characters are so wonderful, and the plot is so twisty, and it’s got important messages about justice and racism and the law…I’d forgotten just how darn much I loved it. Back in 2004-ish I even set up a little website to hold my thoughts and fanfic, but I’m not going to link to it because it was back in 2004 and it’s probably really embarassing now.

SO BLOODY CLEVER. Did you ever notice, how every little thing contributes to the plot/the breaking of the curse? Like Stanley teaching Zero to read: if he hadn’t done that, Zero wouldn’t have been able to read Stanley’s name off the trunk, and the Warden might have gotten hold of it after all. Or, in the movie, the fact that you can actually see the donkey’s skull in one scene, still there after hundreds of years. (Or I’m assuming it’s the donkey’s skull. It looks like a donkey’s skull, and it’s lying in the right position, in the right place…I think.)

The movie is (in one of those rare cases) equally as good. Doesn’t hurt that (like The Hunger Games too this year) it was adapted by the original author. AND OH MY GOD IT’S SO DAMN PRETTY. Most ‘adult’ movies aren’t SO DAMN PRETTY. I mean, look at the image up there. IT IS GORGEOUS. I kind of love that it was advertised as a stupid kid’s comedy – Disney even still lists it as a comedy, a film that features forced labour and suicide and murder and racism and death!- but it was actually a beautiful thoughtful film that just happened to have children as protagonists.

AND ALSO: Kate. She’s just totally awesome. I loved her and Sam, I’d happily read a whole book about them. (As it is, there was actually a semi-sequel to Holes…focusing on Armpit…and I have read it but it was a while ago. I need to read it again.)