Riget (The Kingdom)

I wondered if this good old cult story had ever been showed outside of Scandinavia just to discover that it can be bought all over the world.

I always wonder what Lars Von Trier tried to tell with this mini series on only 8 episodes and why this series was so popular in the 90's? I grew up with this and you can call it rather bizarre that a child watched this but it is me we are talking about. I have never been scared of anything.

But what I got out of watching this is that the dear mr. Von Trier is tired of how modern science outshines the spiritual part of life. How can we know that ghosts do not exist? How do we know that demons do not walk among us and make young ladies pregnant so they get a bizarre looking creature of a baby and how about zombies? What I know from zombies is that they were first seen in voodoo rituals and that you cannot see they are dead. Just like dr. Krogshøj.
Besides that Lars Von Trier has never been afraid to say what he thinks and mean it. Look at all the monkey business going on among the doctors and professors. And how much they sacrifice for science, are they like insane? And they find spiritual mrs. Drusse crazy when she tells about Mary, the girl who's haunting the hospital and was killed by her father, former dr. Krüger who's also the devil himself and who's being reborn and... I already lost you right?
The smartest people at this hospital are the two dishwashers with the down syndrome.

Well, if you are not from Scandinavia and you choose to watch this rather crazy series then there are a few things you will not understand as the hate/love scenario between Sweden and Denmark and the language issue. It is rarely presented though.

So why did it break off so sudden with an ending that makes no sense?
The Kingdom 3 should had been made and the manus was written but then Mrs. Drusse died, Dr. Helmer died and the male dishwasher died and it was blown off. Sadly, because you actually wants to know what happens next. But I heard that Stephen King bought the rights and made an ending. His version is called 'Kingdom Hospital' and I cannot wait to watch it!

So if you want to watch this series the be prepared to take good with evil!

See ya!

The walking dead: The road to Woodbury

A little side story to the other books but yet very relevant because who's Lilly? She is a young lady feeling too much guilt.
She is stuck with other survivors and the camp seems save enough. But nothing lasts forever and you get to meet a mystic drunk character; Bob. You remember him, right?
A guy who loves the bottle and used to heal soldiers in Afghanistan but now he can barely heal himself. He is in love with the young girl Megan but she's already taken and she's married to the needle. She was a troubled kid at school along with Lilly who suffers from anxiety and together they smoked weed until Lilly took off to get an education and what can you use an education for when the apocalypse has begun? Well, you spent all your time reading books and go to your exams to get a grade and then suddenly the world goes down and everyone around you dies. So what can you do? Protect yourself by using a big guy who's in love with you. That's called a smart brain right? Josh is much older than Lilly and though he seems big and scary then he's soft as a sheep. He only kills the dead and he wants justice around the living..
So much that he's being kicked out of the camp they live in. Lilly, Megan, her boyfriend and Bob leaves with him and try to start a new together. They find a place to settle down and they seem safe and calm in this place but soon they are surrounded, the building is ruined and they have to leave right away. They end in up in this strange village called Woodbury and it does no take them long to discover that something is wrong in town. It's ruled by bad people who treats food for... pleasure or whatever else you have to offer them. Megan's boyfriend Scott disappears and no one seems to  care and the Governor.. He seems to be a good man on the outside but a wacko on the inside. In other words: this place is definition of hell on Earth.
And what can they do? Josh and Lilly tries to find a new place and they end up in a big mansion where they think they are safe. But they are not... Not at all and they have to burn it down just to end up back in Woodbury. And that's where hell breaks loose. There is no way of punishing the bad guys and Josh ends up being dead. Poor guy, he really did not deserve it!
Lilly is now all alone, Megan is gone, Scott is gone, Josh is gone and Bob is drunk so what can she do?
All she can do is gather along with people like herself: Those who wants the Governor down. They make a big plan but it fails and Phillip Blake is ruling again... Why, why, why?
And that's where the gladiator fights or whatever you want to call them begins.
Now Woodbury is reborn and everything is just as we know it from TV and the graphic novels.

This book should be read by any Walking Dead fan and I know that you will not regret reading out.
Now I only got one question left... That big storm in this book, it's the biggest storm ever in Georgia! But it is not mentioned in the cartoons...? Dear Kirkman, why?

Have a nice day ;)

The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor

You might wonder why Robert Kirkman chose to write a book about Phillip Blake. If you love Rick and the other survivors we follow from the beginning of the plague and till now when the zombies have taken over for sure and made the living dangerous animal like creatures.
So why write this book?
Maybe to get a better understanding on how the Governor became the owner of Woodbury. And what happened in Woodbury before hand and how did Penny die? There are so many unanswered questions. Well, I read once somewhere, maybe it was a fanzine I cannot recall, but it said that Penny is just his niece. That confused me until I read this book.

Phillip Blake had a brother; his name is Brian Blake and he tries to protect Penny all way through the break down of society. Phillip is the reason why the 5 people make it through and survives as the world is going down, TV stations stop broadcasting and food is no longer being produced. The 5 survivors; Phillip, Brian, Penny and 2 of Phillip's high school friends have heard of a refugee camp in Atlanta and that's where they are heading. They choose though to stay at the upper class suburb outside of Atlanta for a little while enjoying "the good life." After more golf players and rich ladies wearing fur tries to eat them and a little kid successfully eats one (I won't say who) they finally head off to Atlanta just to discover the awful truth.... The refugee camp doesn't exist. You already knew that from the TV show and the graphic novels. After a long fight with the dead they find an apartment with 2 sisters living alone with their sick dad.
Throughout the book you wonder if Kirkman wanted to justify Phillip Blake for being an as*hole all the way but you will discover that you also hated him before Penny's dead. He's a rapist, he wishes his own brother dead and he treats people like puppies. But without him they would not had survived.
His persona is harsh and dictator like and he makes the Governor from the TV show seems lovely compared to Hitler's son in this book.
Brian is the exact opposite though the same blood is rolling in their veins. He's careful, scared and always needs protection, he can barely kill a walker!
He takes care of Penny more than he takes care of himself and if he should make a sacrifice he would throw himself in front of a walker instead of Penny.
After the rape attempt the group is kicked out of the apartment and they hit south. They find a rural area and settle down and starts a new life only with a few roamers visiting them sometimes. Brian is being accused of being paranoid when he begins to hear strange things but he is the smart one. One night they are being robbed by tough survivors and this is where poor Penny cannot make it any longer. But Phillip does not have it in him to put Penny out of her misery so he keeps her alive as they leave the house. They end up in Woodbury where walls are being build. Phillip and his group gets an apartment and no one cares about them. No one cares about anything they actually just keep to themselves and that's how Phillip can sneak in his dead daughter and hide her in the apartment without anyone noticing. Woodbury is being ruled by an insane dude named Gavin and it is Phillip's mission to put him out and take over the place but he fails. Brian on the other hand.... He has the guts now... I will not spoil too much now but let's just say that the Governor is born and he's ready to rule.

This book is for any Walking Dead fan! Enjoy :)  

Alice in Wonderland: through the looking glass

Talking about time traveling then this film does it in an amazing way!
The poor hatter misses his family and now he believes that they are still alive. The only one who can save his sanity is Alice. She finds a way to Wonderland through the looking glass and she sees how everything has changed since the last time she was there. I wish I had watched this film in 3D I just didn't have time the day they showed it.

Anyways. She has to deal with time and he's rather stubborn. He will not let her change the past so she can save the Mad Hatter's family. He tells her that the past is irreversible. She tries anyway. She steals the cronoesphere and travels back to stop the red queen from becoming evil. She soon discovers that Time was right; you cannot change the past you can only learn from it. She leaves the past through a looking glass to come back to her own world and she ends up in a mental institution.. what else?

She's not only battling with what's going on with her friends in Wonderland, she also battles with what's going on in her own life. Her mother has reached an age where she wants grand children and Alice is adventures and wants to keep traveling around the world on her favorite ship which she got from her father. It is rather sad when it comes to fighting with your family over how YOU should live YOUR life.. Your parents ca only give you advice because you don't listen anyway.

Alice escapes and goes back to Wonderland where she indeed discovers that the Hatter family is still alive. Now she only has to find out where they are because all she knows is that The Red Queen keeps them prisoners somewhere. Now it is up to the hatter to safe them but something goes terribly wrong; The Red Queen has stolen the cronoesphere and is traveling back to make up with her sister The White Queen about a little lie in their childhood which had horrible consequences for the future of Wonderland. Time believes that he is immortal and that his world watch is invincible but sadly it seems like the past can beat time. If you see your future self then everything can and will go wrong. And now only Alice can safe the world but will she reach it in time? We hope so!

Even though you are probably an adult like me then this film is ageless. I can slightly recommend to watch this in cinemas and remember to buy a big bunch of popcorn!
And be careful not to freak out to P!nk's song 'Just like fire' in the end.. Then maybe you will end up in the mental institution.

Have fun!
 

'11.22.63'

Long time no see.. I'm really busy studying for my exams but now I have a short break before I have to stay up late again with big coffee eyes.

So I have a simple question now.. Would you travel in time if you could? Would you change it if you had the opportunity? Would you just go back to attempt a concert with The Beatles, Elvis or maybe someone less cliché. Would you change the past? Even though you are aware that the so called butterfly effect can damage everything in the future? These are the dilemmas that Jake Epping has to face when his friend who's sick from cancer introduces him to a 'rabbit hole' which takes you back to the year 1960 (In the book it's 1958 but it doesn't matter). The time is always being spoked as 'the best time ever' when you ask your grand parents but what was the reality? Can you live without your cell phone, your internet and what other privileges you have that makes it easier for you to study?
As you also see in this book/novel then Jim Crow was still alive and would you really want to live in that world? People being separated because of the color of their skins? That's stupid and for Jake Epping it is quiet a challenge. He comes from a time where the 'N'-word is almost forbidden to say and then he comes to this culture shock.

But he has not travelled back in time to be political correct he is on an important mission; he has to safe J.F Kennedy's life. This means he has to stay in the past for 3 years but that means nothing since he's only gone for 2 minutes in the future no matter what. In the book he travels back and forth many times but in the TV series he stays there in one shot.  He is not really suppose to make anyone suspicious and no one is suppose to notice him, he has to blend in to the time and trend and walk around unnoticed. He has a problem though.. He knows too much and then he falls in love with the beautiful Sadie. In the book he goes on this mission alone but in the TV show he finds someone to help him (they are like number 1 enemies in the book). Together they survey Lee Harvey Oswald to discover if he was alone or someone else was involved in the murder of the President. Both the book and the TV show points in the direction that Oswald was alone I don't know wether it's because Stephen King thinks he was alone or if it's because it was easier to make it this way. In the book it sounds like Stephen King thinks he was alone. It doesn't matter, I'm not here to make conspiracies or kill them for that matter.. I wasn't even born I have no idea what the world looked like back then I only know what I read in books.

Ok, but what I truly miss in the TV show is 'The man with the yellow card.' He's far more important in the book. Actually it seems like he was only placed in the TV show because he kinda had to be there. In the book he commits suicide and his replacement 'The man with the green card' from Seattle tells why changing the past is so sensitive and what happens when you try to. In the book you meet the survivors of Pennywise as well (a little something to the geeks I guess ;))
What the future looks like is also far more well described. I feel like the last episode had to be completed too fast. Thanks to Harry Dunning, Jake Epping knows what he has changed. 9/11 never happened and neither did the Vietnam war but the future looks like a war zone.

Every time you jump through the rabbit hole then you make a restart. Or do you? Not if you ask the man with the card. But he really has to pull back what he has done because maybe the murder of Kennedy was cruel but everything happens for a reason.. Always a reason unknown.

Enjoy this amazing mini series and read the book too. You will not be disappointed!

Have fun!

Xoxo