TRAVIS BYRAM'S MOVIE REVIEWS

Wow, wow, wow!  That was a truly remarkable Oscar awards!  First off, congratulations are due to first-time Oscar host Seth MacFarlane, who knocked it out of the park, and only had one joke who didn't land for me: the Lincoln joke.  You know which one I'm talking about.  MacFarlane and the hilariously placed William Shatner predicted what today's headlines would read, and attempted to alter it by providing classy dances, while MacFarlane had previously made a sock-puppet version of "Flight," made out with Sally Field, and a song dedicated to....the risque women of cinema, to put it politely! MacFarlane was a welcome presence when commenting on the length of the show, saying 85-year-old Emmanuelle Riva had been Quvenzhane Wallis' age when the program began!  But what I really came for was to see the race between "Argo," "Lincoln" and "Life of Pi," the presumed front-runners.  The awards started off great though, with Christop...

The age-old question concerning movies and books arose as I was about to enter the cinema to see "Life of Pi 3D..." should I have read the book after the movie (books are 99% of the time better)?  By pure chance I had picked up "Life of Pi," a thick, small novel in my school's library based on the cover alone, of a small foreign child with a tiger in a tiny boat, both looking down at the sea.  Of course with "Pi" you're expecting some math genius, "A Beautiful Mind" type-deal, but then I read the first few chapters that night.  The novel was written in the form of a series of flashbacks, presented as one big story Piscine (Pi) Patel tells a couple of Chinese investigators.  While it was a mammoth of  a thing to get through, it was enchantingly rewarding, and was one of the most interesting books I've read in a long time. "Life of Pi" opens up quietly in a zoo, where Pi and his family make a living.  Pi is so thoroughly in ...