Where to begin with an awesome movie? Alright, first of all….. I will be talking about the film and how it differs from the book, so when I get to the spoilers I will notify you. So really first of all, the acting. I’ll start with the big name stars.

Pierce Brosnan as Chiron was terrific. It was cool to see him in a role as a mentor, not a ladies man secret agent. He did really well portraying, as he himself calls it, a “horse’s ass”.

Uma Thurman as Medusa….what to say other than brilliant? She did well portraying Medusa as someone other than a hideous monster. Her scenes “Sneak a Peek” were terrifically terrifying. She did an amazing job making me feel like I was in a balance between life and death, and had to keep my eyes closed. (I didn’t, but the suspense was awesome).

Sean Bean and Kevin Mckidd as Zeus and Poseidon respectively. They didn’t get a whole lot of screen time, but they were great nonetheless. And Kevin Mckidd, when he’s talking to Percy at the end, he was great trying to get Percy to see his side of things, that he had his duties as a god, and couldn’t be there for Percy.

Steve Coogan and Rosario Dawson were great as Hades and Persephone. Sure, Persephone wasn’t in the book, but I’m still glad they put her in anyways. When I heard that Steve Coogan was portraying Hades of all characters, I thought “Oh great, how’s that one going to turn out?” and the answer is amazing.

Now, onto the Trio and Jake Abel. I think they did a terrific job when they cast Logan, Brandon, Alexandra and Jake as the young stars. Logan Lerman did great playing a kid who didn’t know where he was, and his reactions to the new world of the Gods is simply terrific. “Did that really just happen?” and “This is a pen. It’s a PEN.”

He and Alexandra were terrific on screen. “I have really strong feelings for you, I’m just not sure if they’re good or bad.” Alexandra’s character of Annabeth was really Clarisse and Annabeth rolled into one. (Since Clarisse was not in this film). She’s introduced training with a bunch of other Demi-Gods and beating the living daylights out of them. She’s the one who jacks up Percy at the creek during the Capture the Flag game.

Brandon was the life and soul of the film. He was hilarious, and every comment of his was pure gold. They made Grover’s character less of a geeky unsure kid, and made him more of a ladies man. And his facial expression and smacking her hand when Persephone reached out and felt his jacket was funny. And his moves with his crutches, using them as weapons was hilarious. As well as when he started chewing on a soda can, I did not expect that one!

Jake Abel was awesome as Luke. While he didn’t have the huge scar across his face from the Hesperides dragon like in the book, (which I have heard people complain a lot about) everything else about him was awesome. His acting was brilliant, and the scene where he’s talking about how much he hates his Dad (Hermes) it seemed like he really meant it. And his fighting at the end of the film was cool. (I’ll say no more here.)

Now, onto the actual film. And here it is…..WARNING! IF YOU HAVE A SMALL SPOILER THRESHOLD, LOOK AWAY NOW AS WE WILL BE TALKING ABOUT THE CONTENTS OF THE FILM WHICH IN WAYS DIFFER FROM THE BOOK. Now that we have that out of the way, here we go.

Instead of giving you a blow by blow synopsis of the film, I’m going to tell you what’s different about this from the book. Firstly, the camp does not have as modern of a feel as I expected. It was much more ancient looking, like some tribal place in a way. We don’t meet Clarisse at all, and Percy is immediately put into Poseidon’s cabin. Mr. D is not in this film at all, and neither is Ares. Instead of a Hellhound coming into the camp, Hades appears in his demonic form, and demands that Percy brings the lightning bolt to him in exchange for his mother.

Percy decides to sneak out of camp, and there’s no Oracle or prophecy. He goes to Luke along with Annabeth and Grover and get a shield and the flying shoes. He tells them that the only way for them to get back from the Underworld, is to look for Persephone’s Pearls, which there are three in the U.S. These pearls will bring them back from the Underworld to the real world. (As you might remember, these pearls are given to Percy by a messenger of Poseidon’s halfway through the quest.)

The first is to Medusa’s lair, which is completely run down, not a nice curio shop and diner like the book. The second is at the Parthenon, where they fight the Hydra. (not in the book at all). The last one is at the Lotus Hotel and Casino, probably my favorite scene in the film. They finally get all three and go to Hollywood where they get to the HOLLYWOOD sign, and enter into the Underworld where they meet Charon, who ferries them to Hades’ palace.

Hades gets the Lightning Bolt, from a shield that Luke gave Percy, so we find out that Luke is a traitor. Persephone steals the bolt from Hades and attacks him, then gives the bolt to Percy because if there’s a war, she’d be stuck with Hades. They escape, and Luke attacks them. Instead of Percy and Ares fighting over teh Lightning Bold, Luke and Percy have a fight for the Lightning Bolt with Luke saying that the reason he stole the bolt was that if the Gods had war, the Demi-gods could then take over the Gods, and rule. (In the book he does it for Kronos so the Titans can become the rulers again. How they’re going to turn that around for Sea of Monsters is anyone’s guess.) Percy then makes a trident out of water and hurls it at Luke, impaling him in the neck and hurling him out of sight.

The movie ends about the same way as the book, more or less. Also, there was no talk of a pact with the Big Three about not having kids anymore. No mention of how a child of the big three once age 16 would make a decision that would save….or destroy Olympus. I’m sure though that they’ll mention it in The Sea of Monsters. Instead of the Big Three pact, Zeus made a rule that the Gods could not interact with their children at all, because Poseidon was becoming more human around Sally and Percy, he left when Percy was seven months old.

All in all, if you’re a perfectionist who needs to see the actual book page for page put on screen you might be disappointed. But, if you can live with the changes that they made, and just accept it for what it is, a screen adaption of the book. NOT THE ACTUAL BOOK, then you will enjoy this awesome flick. Like Mr. Titley the screenwriter said: “The book and movie are two completely different beasts, if you made the book completely into a movie you would get too long of a movie. You need to make cuts and changes to make it a movie” I completely agree with the statement. (By the way, I’m paraphrasing that quote. The quote is I believe in the last interview we put up from Mr. Titley.

This film is absolutely worth going to see, and I will be seeing it again with my family this weekend. I strongly recommend this film to all moviegoers, Percy Jackson reader or not, go see this film! It’s fun for the whole family!!

Our verdict? 5 out of 5 stars! Enjoy the film and let us know what you thought of The Lightning Thief!!!!!

Fifteen-year-old Haley Riordan’s life has been utterly changed thanks to the young son of a Greek god who loves nothing more than going on quests and fighting with fire-breathing monsters. Percy Jackson is the ­creation of Haley’s father, Rick, a former teacher from Texas. His Percy Jackson adventures (there are five in all) are huge bestsellers (the latest book, The Last Olympian, had an initial print run of 1.2m) and attract hordes of fans who queue at book-signings wearing togas. Now Percy’s profile is about to rise even higher thanks to a new film starring Uma Thurman and Pierce Brosnan.

But Percy is an unlikely superhero: he has never scored above a grade C in his life, and he thinks he’s a loser, until page 88 of The Lightning Thief (the first in the series). For Percy has dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), just like Haley, on whom the character was based. At the start of his adventures, Percy discovers that his difficulties are not a weakness after all, but a sure sign of greatness: when he sees words jumbled on the page, it’s because his mind is hard-wired for ancient Greek, and when the ADHD makes it hard to sit still in the classroom, it’s just hyper-awareness that will keep him alive on the battlefield.

“Percy has changed my life,” says Haley. “You read a lot of books and none of them have a hero who is dyslexic or has ADHD – it’s always perfect people in a perfect world doing perfect things. Percy is, in fact, very flawed and he has to fight against that and at the same time fight monsters.”

The character started out as a bed-time story for Haley, then nine. At the time Haley refused to read and hated school so much he would sit under the table and cry. But he was fascinated by Greek myths, and so his father would recount his favourite ones. When he ran out of stories, Haley said, “Why can’t you just make one up?” And so Percy Jackson was born.

I meet Rick, 45, at his home in San Antonio, Texas, where he lives with his wife, Becky, 45, and their two sons, Haley and Patrick, 11. Rick cuts a neat figure in a clean-cut blue shirt and grey trousers. But this, like his simplified prose, is at odds with a deeper emotional drive. He gave up teaching five years ago, but still sees himself as an educator who wants to make a difference; a champion of the sidelined.

“I get an enormous number of emails and letters from families who have children who are ADHD or dyslexic. One of my favourites is a young girl who wrote to me and said she used to be ashamed that she had ­dyslexia, but now she has read the Percy Jackson books she wears that as a badge of honour. And that means the world to me. There are so many other children out there like my son who are struggling with these issues and feel there is something wrong with them, and there’s not. It’s simply a different way of processing information.”

He says he isn’t trying to preach to children, only seduce them into ­reading with humour, terror and excitement to keep them on the edge of their seats from page to page. “I have a great deal of sympathy for reluctant readers because I was one. I would do anything to avoid reading. In my case, it wasn’t until I was 13 and discovered the Lord of the Rings that I learned to love reading.”

But his books, even if they have no moral, do have a constant theme, which is the complexity of family life. Percy adores his mortal mother, Sally, who works in a sweet shop in Grand Central Station, hates his stepfather, Gabe, and is ambivalent about his father, Poseidon, aka Old Seaweed, who doesn’t make himself known to Percy until he’s 12 and only then because he wants something.

“We tend to think of divorced or complicated families as a modern invention, and that is not at all true,” he says. “You only have to read the Greek myths to see broken homes, widows, divorce, ­stepchildren, children trying to get along with new parents.”

His own family life is remarkably stable: the only child of two teachers, he grew up in San Antonio and met his wife, aged 15. “We were high-school sweethearts. We’ve grown up together and it’s hard to get away with anything because she knows everything about me.” After studying English and history at the University of Austin, Texas, Rick trained as a teacher, specialising in 11 to 14-year-olds. “Critical years when everything is in flux for the kids: emotionally, socially, academically, intellectually. I find it a very gratifying age group to work with because these are such formative years.”

He started writing when he was 13, and published his first novel at 29, Big Red Tequila, about a private detective in San Antonio, and the first of what was to become the Tres Navarre mystery series for adults. Rick ­settled down to a routine of teaching and writing a book a year, but then gave up teaching in 2005 after selling the Percy Jackson series.

The books may be consistent best-sellers, but there is more than a passing similarity to another boy wizard, Harry Potter. Both attend boarding schools for children with special powers (Hogwarts; Camp Half-Blood); both use landmarks as magical gateways to secret worlds (King’s Cross station; the Empire State Building); and both have faithful sidekicks (Ron and Hermione; Grover and Annabeth).

Is Percy Jackson similar to Harry Potter? “Yes, absolutely,” he concedes, “but I don’t think it’s because Percy is modelled after Harry Potter. It’s because they are both models of the same arche type. A lot of what JK Rowling does so well is draw from Greek mythology: the idea of magic being in the world; of great forces that are not seen; a young protagonist who is outcast but then finds out that he actually has a great destiny; he has great abilities but needs to go to a trainer to get them recognised; he has to realise his destiny by taking on a quest and accomplishing a great task – well, I’ve just described Harry Potter. I’ve also just described Hercules, Percy Jackson, Perseus and Theseus.”

However, he’s the first to admit that JK Rowling was an influence. “As a teacher, I’ve never seen anything like Harry Potter. That’s why I smart when people talk about the ‘next’ Harry Potter. There is no ‘next’ Harry Potter. There never was a Harry Potter before Harry Potter. It’s completely unprecedented in children’s literature. I had students who read these books 13, 14 times and I would say, ‘Great book, but don’t you want to try something else?’ And they would say, ‘There’s nothing else this good.’”

So, he says he “took some lessons” in her blend of humour, mystery, ­adventure, action, character. But mostly, he says, Harry Potter opened doors. “It made publishers aware there was a market for children’s literature, and it convinced me, as it convinced a lot of writers, that writing for children was a viable thing to do.”

He is now a full-time writer, but says: “I’m afraid I’m very ADHD, much like Percy. There are days when I’ll write for 15 minutes and have to give up and move around, and I’ll write another paragraph and give up again. On other days I get intensely focused on the process, sit down at 8am and won’t get up until 8pm.”

The other difference is that Haley is more confident and is even writing his own novels – an achievement that he rates as an “in yer face moment” for all those teachers who ignored him. “Basically, I misspell stuff but that’s about as far as the dyslexia hinders me. It’s coming straight from your head!”

He is keen to point out that they are full length novels – longer even than anything his father has ever written. “As soon as I bypassed him, I was like, wow, it’s longer than you!” He smiles at his father and Rick smiles back. He’s seen it all before, of course. “Every Greek hero has to make his father proud and yet outdo him,” he says.

“That’s a very strong motivator, especially for young men.”

[Source: Guardian]

Then Hades turns into a demon, asking him if that’s better to which Grover replies: “No! Lets stick with the whole Mick Jagger thing”. The other one is with the Trio in the Lotus Lounge Casino, escaping. Also pretty cool. Personally I like the Underworld scene better, but that’s just me. What do you think?

They are looking good together as they prep for their big The Lightning Thief premiere in roughly 8 short weeks.

Check out the photos and use our new toolbar below to share them to show off to your friends.

[Source: JustJaredjr]

Logan Lerman is dealing with a question that comes to successful teenage actors and basketball prodigies alike: should he go to college or go to work? Right now he’s not certain what the answer will be. But he knows he wants to stay in the movie business—and not just as an actor. “I feel like almost the only thing I want to do in my life is to make movies,” says the 18-year-old Los Angeles native. “But, growing up on sets, I feel like if I go to a film school I might discover that I don’t need to be there to make films.”

Logan Lerman looking sharp for Vanity Fair

Lerman has worked alongside a number of major stars—Russell Crowe and Christian Bale in 3:10 to Yuma; Mel Gibson in The Patriot—but says he learned the most from Jim Carrey, who gave him a crash course in film acting during the making of The Number 23.

“He would tell me about his experiences on movies like Man on the Moon,” Lerman recalls. “I learned a lot from him on how to embody a character and get into a scene.”
Next month, Lerman can be seen playing the title character (a son of the Greek god Poseidon, born and raised in present-day America) in the big-budget, fantasy-action extravaganza Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. The movie is based on the first novel in the best-selling series written by Rick Riordan. The director is Chris Columbus, who has pumped out a few of the biggest moneymakers of all time (Home Alone, the first few Harry Potters).

With any luck, there will be sequels. “I think I’m signed on to do three of them or something like that,” Lerman says. In the meantime, he’ll be finishing his senior year of high school and figuring out what to do about the whole college thing.

[Source: Vanity Fair]

There were inscriptions written above the entrance of the Temple of Apollo at the Oracle of Delphi, and the two most famous ones were cautionary words of wisdom: “Know thyself” and “Nothing too much.” Those bits of ancient advice are worth considering as two Hollywood studios hope to launch film franchises that use Greek mythology as the unlikely premise for popcorn entertainment.

“These are the stories that began storytelling in many ways,” director Louis Leterrier said a few months ago on the London set of his “Clash of the Titans,” the Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures epic that arrives in theaters in March with Sam Worthington as Perseus, Liam Neeson as Zeus and Ralph Fiennes as Hades. “These are tales of adventure that endure. These stories are who we are.”

True, which lives up to the “Know thyself” advice. But as for that second suggestion, the one calling for limits, well, Hollywood has never been known for moderation. “Clash of the Titans” arrives in theaters on the winged heels of “Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief,” which also has mighty Zeus (Sean Bean), the nefarious Hades (Steve Coogan) and the other gods of grand Olympus, although it brings them to modern-day Manhattan where they meet the title character, one of the most popular heroes at the bookstores in recent years with the bestselling young-reader novels of Rick Riordan. No surprise, the makers of both films are eyeing each other with some anxiety.

“You can’t ignore it,” said “Percy Jackson” director Chris Columbus while taking a break from post-production work in San Francisco on the film that opens Feb. 12 and, for Fox, has been circled as a potential “Harry Potter”-style multiple-film property. “They are two completely different pictures. But I’d be a liar if I said that I’m not fascinated by everything they’re doing. In today’s version of Hollywood, you have to be aware of everything else that’s going on around you. It’s just kind of foolish to put yourself in a bubble and pretend it’s not there.”

It’s interesting that, after so many years of futuristic tales, Hollywood is once again looking back to Greece and the Roman Empire for adventure tales and, in the cases of “Clash” and “Percy,” special-effects fantasies. Just as “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Chronicles of Narnia” were pulled from the bookshelf for their potential in this digital-effects era, Columbus said the thunderbolts of Zeus and the pits of Tartarus are camera-ready for the 21st century. “The world of Greek myth really hasn’t been dealt with, on screen, in a long time, at least not in terms of a big blockbuster motion picture,” Columbus said. “It’s exciting to think about. At least it is for me.”

What do you think? Is it a good idea for two separate studios to be making movies based on Grecian myths, not only in the same year, but a month apart? Personally I think that they both have the potential to do very well. On one hand, you have “The Lightning Thief” which has a good fan base among the younger generation and will be more appropriate for kids. (Although, neither have been rated yet.) And on the other hand you have “Clash of the Titans” which is a remake, meaning some who have seen the older version may be interested in seeing it.

[Source: LATimes]

Book 5: The Last Olympian

In Riordan’s universe, Greek mythology — along with its vividly imagined heroes and monsters — is alive and well in New York City. Percy, short for Perseus, here concludes his adventures (for the moment) with great humor and inventiveness, not to mention nearly world-ending mayhem.

See the Original Review at The New York Times