Ling's Report

The Dark Knight Rises is the final movie in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight movie trilogy. Nolan has set the bar for himself quite high ever since the second movie, The Dark Knight , gathered critical acclaim; he certainly does not disappoint with the third movie. This movie takes place roughly eight years after the event of The Dark Knight after the Joker’s rampage was put to a stop. Bruce Wayne has become a recluse, having hung up his cowl and still haunted by the death of Rachel Dawes. However, a new threat has come to Gotham, a threat named ‘Bane.’ Bane is a terrifying antagonist, incredibly strong and very cunning as well; Bruce Wayne returns to being Batman to face him, but the past years have not been kind to him and Bane is more than ready to take on the Bat.   This movie was definitely a fun one. Bane was a wonderful villain, a combination of monstrous fighter and criminal mastermind who has a great presence, causing audience members to be on the edge of their...

The Night Circus is a 2011 novel written by Erin Morgenstern. It features a circus known as “Le Cirque de R ê ves, a circus clad in black and white colors that only opens at night. The circus has become the site of a contest between two men: Prospero the Enchanter and Mr. Alexander H---. The two have selected two young illusionists to be their proxies, Prospero choosing his own daughter Celia and Mr. Alexander choosing a young orphan boy named Marco. However, none of the players know the rules of the game or even who their competitor is. This is a book that is very much magical realism, a world where magic and mundane are intimately linked together. Reading through The Night Circus truly does feel like walking through a childhood dream of a carnival of wonders. It is true that the magical elements of the book are never really explained, but that can be excused given the folklore-esque narrative and that such explanations would ruin the whole point of magical realism. The circu...

I remember when I was still in high school I had stumbled upon the Wikipedia page for a movie called The Ruins . I remember reading through the plot of the movie and noticed that it was based on a book. A couple years later and I finally got my hands on the book. The Ruins is a novel written by Scott Smith in 2006. It is about a group of four college students: Jeff, Amy, Stacy, and Eric. The four of them are on vacation and meet up with two other characters: a German named Mathias and a Greek that calls himself Pablo. Mathias’s brother Heinrich had run off to an archaeological dig site because he had fallen in love with one of the archaeologists and Mathias wants to bring him back. Jeff offers to accompany him and that is how the four end up going to the ruins. Despite several attempts to dissuade them, the six go up to the ruins only to be forcibly quarantined up there by several Mayans after Amy stepped on some of the vines growing there. Things get worse when Pablo fal...