Entries Tagged 'Greece' ↓
November 10th, 2009 — 4 Stars, Big Misunderstanding, Category, Comedy of Manners, Contemporary, G-I, Greece, Love Triangle, Mistaken Identity, Science, Teacher, Writer
This category romance would make a great farcical romantic comedy movie. Just keep reading and you’ll know what I mean.
The Bryants – Jane (heroine), Guy (brother)
The Dysons – Stuart (fiancé), Pauline (future sister-in-law)
Two pairs of brother and sister pretend to be married to each other in order to land a job on an archaeological site in Greece. The heroine is engaged to the brother of the other pair. Her future sister-in-law crushes hard on the site’s leading archaeologist. The dig boss and hero fights falling in love with the heroine. The only supposedly single man on the site falls hard for the future sister-in-law. The only one not romantically inclined is the brother of the heroine.
Sounds crazy? It was!
The hero, Dr. Nikolas Vallas, hates adulterers. He rides hard on the heroine, Jane Bryant, who he sees as the worse of the lot. Guy is either clueless to his wife’s behavior or doesn’t have the masculinity to reign her in or divorce her. Pauline is a creature to pity as she’s utterly clueless to her husband and best friend’s deception. Stuart is a cheating bastard. But Jane--- she takes the cake. She cheats on her husband, with her best friend’s husband, and the son of his long time friend, Tim.
Tim figures out the deception and what Nikolas perceives as more acts of adultery is in fact very innocent. Tim is using Jane as a sounding board for his attempts to win Pauline’s affections. Pauline however is mooning over Nikolas and doesn’t like Tim’s attention one bit. Jane meanwhile is reeling from something Tim said about love. He said something along the lines of “If you’re really in love, you couldn’t wait to be married.” Jane finds herself falling in love with a man who hates everything about her and seems to be falling in love with Pauline.
Petals Drifting is a very erroneous title for the plot. They’re there in the off season for tourists. It’s not fall. It’s more like spring. Anyway, the story is very tense, very quick, and solid. I devoured it.
Rating: 4 Stars
Buy: Petals Drifting
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July 18th, 2009 — 3 Stars, A-C, Blackmail, Book Review, Contemporary, Fantasy, Greece, Magic Users, Sports, Supernatural, United States of America
Oh. My. Gods. is a pretty decent young adult novel. As an older reader, I wish it provided me with more… more everything. I would recommend this book for young preteens up to age fourteen or fifteen. It’s clean, it’s cute, and it’s got fun paranormal elements.
The majority of the work is set in Greece, where Phoebe must live with her mother, her new husband, and her ‘evil’ stepsister. It’s her senior year of high school and all Phoebe wants is to be home, taking her classes, and running for track so she can go to USC on full scholarship.
Her new school is crazy tough on academics (don’t all teenagers think that?), the cliques are impossible to break into, and she doesn’t fit in (who does?) because she’s not a descendant of a god. Say what? That’s right Phoebe’s biggest problem is that she’s normal, has no ‘superpowers,’ and most importantly can’t trace her ancestry to one of the Greek gods.
Her stepsister is a part of the Hera entourage, whose closest affiliation is the Zeus gang… aka part of the most popular set on campus. The boy she crushes on is part of Ares, who is not only the god of war but also the patron of athletes. His girlfriend is a member of the Aphrodite group… and a cheerleader. She just can’t compete! Or can she?
Spoiler.... Phoebe and her crush, Griffin, wind up together after some traditional teenage drama and conflict. It works even though it’s rushed. The book is under 265 pages, making it a fast read.
Rating: 3 Stars
Buy: Oh. My. Gods.
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June 15th, 2009 — 3.5 Stars, Contemporary, Greece, Movie Reviews, Travel
Wow, another movie that was totally trashed by reviewers is yet another one I really enjoyed watching. I think My Life in Ruins is a smash. It uses stereotypes to make everything appear awful at first and then slowly unravels the truth beneath the façade. You have obnoxious American tourists, an old lady that steals everything that isn’t nailed down, a gentleman who thinks he’s the life of the party, Australians you can’t understand even though they speak English, a married couple at each other’s throats, a moody teenager, divorced woman on a man hunt, etc.
Georgia, played by Nia Vardalos, must take this ragtag group of tourists through Greece. She knows everything there is to know about the ruins and monuments, but she’s disillusioned. Nobody cares about history or the treasures right before their eyes. Georgia has lost her kaffee.
Richard Dreyfuss plays Irv, the tourist who thinks he’s hilarious. Irv is rude, makes terrible jokes, and wears down Georgia’s every last nerve until she snaps. To her horror she finds out this is the worse trip for him ever not because she’s a terrible tour guide, but because his wife is dead and this is his first time abroad without her.
Poupi, a terrible name if there ever was one and one of the few things that was just this side of ridiculous in the movie, is the bus driver. Alexis Georgoulis is quite handsome under his beard and long hair. Poupi crushes on Georgia and helps her rediscover her love of Greece and love of life during this trip.
The romance is cute, the bad guy gets his dues, and you get to enjoy the fabulous scenery of Greece. Having been, I’m so glad they showed the Parthenon in Athens at night. It truly is an amazing sight to see. It looked magical in person and on screen.
My one major irk, and my mother’s too, who saw this with me, was Nia’s shoes. How on earth could that woman traipse around Greece’s ruins in high heels, tall platform shoes, etc.? It just isn’t possible. Delphi for instance, was repaved by the Romans in old marble monuments. The road is slippery and sweats in the summer months and it tricky to navigate in tennis shoes! The Parthenon has gravel and chunks of rocks everywhere, no way! She would twist an ankle and fall.
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Buy: My Life in Ruins
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