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Hazel (1853 KP) rated It's About Love in Books

Dec 17, 2018

<i>This eBook was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

It’s About Love</i> is not a typical love story. The author of Tape, Steven Camden, has written a story from the point of view of a sixteen-year-old boy named Luke. In his first week of college he meets a girl in his film studies class. Her name is Leia and, ignoring the Star Wars connection, their passion for film makes them the perfect partners.

Luke, however, comes from a very troubling background. He has purposefully chosen a college two bus journeys away in order to escape his past. He can try to hide his relation to his brother due to be released from prison, but he cannot cover up the scar on his face. Initially Luke wants as little attention as possible, although once he starts developing feelings for Leia he enjoys being around her and her friends.

Yet everything changes when Luke’s past life and friends collide with the new. Believing he has ruined everything with Leia, Luke needs all the encouragement he can get from his film studies tutor, Noah, to keep on going.

Camden writes the story through first person narrative, film directions and ideas in Luke’s notebooks. This is an interesting method and helps to create a clearer picture of Luke’s personality. He is a teenager with potential and the ability to think for himself. It is his past history that makes him feel like he does not deserve happiness or success.

Although I liked the concept I did not care for any of the characters. Many could be described as thuggish and a lot of violence was involved. I understand that Luke needed to be involved with these types of people for the storyline to work, but it was not for me.

Despite the title, <i>It’s About Love</i> is more suitable for young adult males than it is females due to the nature of the story and the main character. Whether a boy would happily be caught reading a book with ‘love’ written on the cover is another matter. Steven Camden clearly has the young adult audience in mind as he writes and, even though I did not think it anything special, I am sure there will be many readers who will love this book.

Kudos

Neon's Nerd Nexus (360 KP) created a post

Dec 23, 2019

'The Neon Demon' 2016 is my film of the decade and also my favourite film of all time too.

'The Neon Demon' is all my passion, my addiction, my love for cinema and everything that inspires me, excites and drives me in life all crammed together into one cinematic masterpiece. In fact I think this film is so perfect and it means so much to me that its become a huge obsession of mine to the point where I think about it on a daily basis and even have my phone/room themed around it, tattoos of it, clothing/earnings based around it and it also influences most photos I take too. Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn and just like 'Only God Forgives'/'Drive' its visually immense, beautiful, intimidating, full of mystery and chock full of raw emotion too. Every scene is dense, rich and stylish with clearly a lot of time, care and thought put into each one be it the colours, lighting, camera angles or object placement everything in the frame is there for a purpose both visually and metaphorically. This film invokes and awakens so many emotions with me every single time I watch it that every time it ends I feel I've learnt something new not onlu about the film but about myself too. With next level acting and such an unnerving yet spellbinding soundtrack 'The Neon Demon' almost sends shivers down my spine and catapults me into a hypnotic state of immersion still when rewatching it to this day. Clearly inspired by Dario Argento movies such as 'Suspira' this film also has such a nostalgic feel to it as well containing very similar themes and uncomfortable visual/psychological horror too that many will no doubt find disturbing but to me it helps ramp up the tension, create a chilling atmosphere and adds huge emotional impact to the film. I doubt any film will ever replace this film as my top spot and although its slated by pretty much everyone (Jena Malone however said she was proud of it when I met her) the sheer depth, horror, inspiration, courage, enlightenment and joy that I personally get from watching it makes me feel so alive that if I met NWR I think I'd just burst into tears of gratitude.

Tom Nanni aka Neon Nans Reviews