Castle

               There is a tv series that i am currently watching right now called Castle. It is a comedy and mystery show. The main characters name is Richard Castle. He is a famous book writer in the series. He is now engaged to Kate Beckett, one of the actual investigators on the team. Castle just goes with them to help out and provide insight on the cases. Along side those too in the presinct is Ryan and Espezito. They are also investigators on the team.
               This past Monday on the new episode, things get a little weird. They are called in to a house where a woman was tortured and found dead at the scene. All of the evidence points to one man. They have photos of this man as he was put into a psychiatric hospital a few years back. The only problem is, they have no record of him; he has no name, no home, and no family.
              Eventually the neighbors of the house that the lady was murdered in, called up the presinct and told them that the man they were looking for just broke into that house. They get there and find him searching for something in her house. They arrest him and take him in for questioning. Once they get back, he starts telling them about how he is from the future and he knows that billions of people are going to die, but he doesnt know how or why.
              Once they find some clues they get led to this abandonded power plant. There they find the other  man who came back in time to ruin the past so that in the future, this big powerful group can take over and rule the world. Castle and Beckett were surprised to see him when they got there. He knocked Beckett out and then began strangling Castle, right as he was about to suffocate him, the good guy from the future showed up and made the bad guy run away.
           They go back to the presinct and start searching for more clues and looking over evidence. Eventually they find that the bad guy is looking for a college student (who in the future creates a group that stops the other bad group from ruling the world and killing millions of people) and to kill him. They go to this students old highschool to find out where he is and look at one of the pieces of writing they find to be his. There, they find out that he is living with someone and is in college. They call the person that he is living with and that person tells them that he is at an iMax film. They find out that this showing is very far away and that there is no chance that they'll get there in time.
       Now the scene switches to the bad guy in the iMax theater stalking the kid and slowly walking over about to kill him. He walks up behind him and right as he is about to pull the trigger, Ryan and Espezito catch him and cuff him.
     They take him back to the presinct and ask him multiple questions but he doesnt say a word or even make a sound. Outside of the questioning room, Castle and Beckett are talking to the good guy from the future. He says he needs to leave, as his job here is done. Castle notices that he left one of his devices behind and chases him around the corner, but as soon as Castle turns the corner, he is no longer there. Thus, leaving you with the crazy idea that he is indeed from the future.  <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/R2vHwPkrYHw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Romeo and Juliet, Leonardo DiCaprio

        In class we are reading and watching the original play and several remakes of Romeo and Juliet. This is a classic love story about how a lower class man, Romeo, falls in love with an upper class woman once they meet at a party.
        At first Romeo was in a deep depression for he had been in love with another woman but she was a nun and therefore they could not get married. He was sad and decided to go to the party to find his love, the nun, but instead found another girl Juliet who was of a higher class than he was.
        This relates to our lives because it shouldn't matter what background you come from, you should be able to fall in love and marry anyone that you please, so long they are in love with you as well.
       In the modern-time remake, Romeo is acted by Leonardo DiCaprio. I think this is a great fit because like in so many others of the movies he has done, he falls in love with a woman of a higher class, or falls in love with a woman in general. Such as in "Titanic" where Jack, played by Leo, is a poor man who gets two tickets for him and his friend in short notice by gambling just a few minutes before the ship took off for America. On board Jack sees Rose, a classy woman high in the upper class, attempt to commit suicide by jumping off of the Titanic in to the frigid waters below. He then saves her and begins to fall in love with her the more and more he sees her.
**SPOILER ALERT**
        Unfortunately Jack ends up dying in the end, but Rose changes her last name to Dawson, which was Jack's last name. This shows that she too fell in love with him and it doesn't matter what class you are from or currently in when it comes to love.

Recommendation: The Shack

             I liked this book a lot more than I honestly expected to. I was a little weary at the fact that this had a lot to do with religion and Christianity. I usually don't even attempt to read stories like that as they are very opinionated and can contradict ones beliefs, therefore becoming a very poor book in certain readers' eyes.
          
This book for me though was a bit of an exception. It wasn't very opinionated on Mack's religion (that being Christianity) as it was more interesting in describing the importance of it to him. It shows in immense detail how living with God in your life, whether it be spiritually or legit physically like in this book, can alter it for the better.
           While living with the representation of Jesus in real life, Mack grew as a person. He began to realize that some things happen for a reason and you may not be able to always control it. Will Mack find out who killed his daughter? Was going to the shack in his best interest or could he have lived on with out this experience?
     

             I would recommend this book to anyone who likes a story that gets them thinking. One that keeps them constanly guessing about whats going to happen next, as well as someone who enjoys spiritual and Christian religion books. I give this book a 3.8 out of 5 stars. It was was descriptive, but at some points there were times where I lost interest, and it took awhile for it to get going in the beginning.

Character Development

         
            For Mack, his look on things changed dramatically throughout the book. In the beginning he was very depressed and going through the time called the "Great Sadness". He was depressed about how on a family vacation his daughter got abducted and he has not seen her since. He started to become further and further away from his wife, other kids, and friends as he slipped into a deeper depression. She is presumably dead as they believe she got murdered.
           
             Mack has changed because since he was depressed in the beginning, the life changing experience when he gets the letter and goes to the shack, helps him see his life and the situation about his daughter differently. When he gets to the shack he meets several different characters that represent his religious beliefs. The most important being Papa, the one who wrote the letter that Mack got in the mail on that freezing, icy-cold day. "I had a little tussle with the driveway when i got the mail, but other than that, everything is fine" (Young 21). Papa is the physical representation of Jesus

            
After spending an immense amount of time at the shack with all of these spiritual characters, he begins to realize that some things just happen in life. Some of them you can control and others just happen without explanation or reason, they just do. For example his daughter being abducted. Being with these with these physical representations of spiritual beliefs helped him realize that you can't always help it, so he begins to forgive. He forgives his daughters attacker and everything that has happened.
      "Mack settled back into his chair surveying the view from the porch. 'I feel so full!'"
     "'Well, you've eaten most of the scones.'"
     "'Thats not what I mean,'" he laughed, "'and you know it. The world just looks a thousand times brighter and I fell a thousand times lighter.'"
       This is when Mack is sitting on the front porch of the cabin with Jesus talking about why everything had happened to his daughter like it did. He says that he feels lighter as a metaphor to represent him understanding all of this now. He has come to accept what has happened and to live with it.