Tuesday, December 4, 2012

The Voice: Disastrous Elminination of Melanie Martinez And Amanda Brown, Leaving Team Adam With Zero Acts

Melanie Martinez and Amanda Brown Eliminated From The Voice

Carson Daly was actually right with his summation during the Top 6 Live Performances. The remaining artists have been through it all -- intense competition, grueling rehearsals and heartbreaking eliminations. That is why whoever got eliminated this week are already winners on their own right.

The pressure doubled when the Top 6 had to perform twice during the night. They performed one song that they personally chose and another chosen by their coach. But at the end of the elimination night two unfortunate artists went home after gaining the lowest public votes.

It was with great sadness that I faced Melanie Martinez's elimination, together with Amanda Brown, leaving Team Adam with zero artists to the next rounds. Only Teams Blake and Cee Lo have the chance to grab this year's crown on The Voice.

It was sad to see that Melanie Martinez and Amanda Brown has to go home, pitting Adam with the fate Christina Aguilera experienced a week ago. Lets us watch again these two artist's last performances:

Melanie Martinez: Crazy by Cee Lo Green (Personal Choice) / The Show by Lenka (Coach's Choice)


Before the elimination round, Melanie Martinez was the only one remaining among my two most favorite (the first one to go was Sylvia Yacoub). Maybe her blue hair-dye made that difference and contributed to her bad luck. Only one thing stuck to my mind, though: this New York high school artistic soul has achieved a feat of staying on the show up to the Top 6 that not many "silent singers" has achieved in The Voice before.


At least she has expressed her self in the show through her unique artistry. Her lullaby effect, as Christina Aguilera said it, is the best thing about her that is why I loved her so much. It just made me sad that I have no more favorites left in the show.

Amanda Brown: (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman by Aretha Franklin (Personal Choice) / Here I Go Again by Whitesnake (Coach's Choice)



Despite only being stolen by Adam from Cee Lo, Amanda has proven her singing prowess by making it this far in the show. I always thought that she could make it up to the Semi-Finals, but I guess her powerful performance isn't just enough to save her from leaving the show.


This is the part where talent is already disregarded and the popularity game has become the fuel of the show. The fact that she was the last of Adam Levine's artists after Melanie was first eliminated made her elimination even harder to accept.

The Voice Top 6 During Elimination
The Voice moves on with the Top 4 who will face each other in the Semi-Finals. Their live performances will be aired on December 10, 2012 and will be followed by the elimination round a day after, leaving only two artists to battle it out on the Grand Finals. I bet Cassadee Pope will make it through and has the great chance of actually winning the third season of The Voice.

But before we can ascertain this prediction, watch the remaining rounds only on NBC at exactly 8 PM Eastern Time.

PS: Go Team Blake! Go Team Cee Lo! Good Luck to the remaining artists, namely Cassadee Pope, Trevin Hunte, Nicholas David and Terry McDermott.

Kernel's Library: "Magic Came Very Easy For Me..."

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens Book 00060: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Title:
- David Copperfield (or The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery)

First Publication:
- 1894 by Bradbury & Evans


Trivia:
- Many elements within the novel follow events in Dickens' own life, and it is probably the most autobiographical of all of his novels.
- Like all except five of his works, it originally appeared in serial form (published in monthly installments).
- This is Dicken's favorite, saying, "...like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield."


Award:
- BBC's Big Read (Best loved novel, 2003, No 34)
- The Observer's 100 Greatest Novels of All Time (2003)




Aside from his christmas stories, this is the first Dickens book that I finished reading. At first I was hesitant to buy any Dickens books for I thought they were "not so easy to grasp," but on the contrary they were as an easy read as you could wish for. The narration is very fluent and the story's continuity is intact despite its being a serial first published in a periodical. This grand work of a grand author is incomparable. Usually if I read biographical-like novels I tend to become sleepy but this one never allowed me to doze off or even wink a bit. I really liked this book!

Be enthralled by reading an excerpt of David Copperfield:

"I Am Born"

I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk, or 'there by', as they say in Scotland. I was a posthumous child. My father's eyes had closed upon the light of this world six months, when mine opened on it. There is something strange to me, even now, in the reflection that he never saw me; and something stranger yet in the shadowy remembrance that I have of my first childish associations with his white grave-stone in the churchyard, and of the indefinable compassion I used to feel for it lying out alone there in the dark night, when our little parlour was warm and bright with fire and candle, and the doors of our house were-almost cruelly, it seemed to me sometimes-bolted and locked against it.

An aunt of my father's, and consequently a great-aunt of mine, of whom I shall have more to relate by and by, was the principal magnate of our family. Miss Trotwood, or Miss Betsey, as my poor mother always called her, when she sufficiently overcame her dread of this formidable personage to mention her at all (which was seldom), had been married to a husband younger than herself, who was very handsome, except in the sense of the homely adage, 'handsome is, that handsome does'-for he was strongly suspected of having beaten Miss Betsey, and even of having once, on a disputed question of supplies, made some hasty but determined arrangements to throw her out of a two pair of stairs' window. These evidences of an incompatibility of temper induced Miss Betsey to pay him off, and effect a separation by mutual consent. He went to India with his capital, and there, according to a wild legend in our family, he was once seen riding on an elephant, in company with a Baboon; but I think it must have been a Baboo-or a Begum. Anyhow, from India tidings of his death reached home, within ten years. How they affected my aunt, nobody knew; for immediately upon the separation, she took her maiden name again, bought a cottage in a hamlet on the sea-coast a long way off, established herself there as a single woman with one servant, and was understood to live secluded, ever afterwards, in an inflexible retirement.

My father had once been a favourite of hers, I believe; but she was mortally affronted by his marriage, on the ground that my mother was 'a wax doll'. She had never seen my mother, but she knew her to be not yet twenty. My father and Miss Betsey never met again. He was double my mother's age when he married, and of but a delicate constitution. He died a year afterwards, and, as I have said, six months before I came into the world.

Grade: A

Ahoy! JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy To Be Made Into BBC Miniseries

The Casual Vacancy

Despite disappointing the Vatican, JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy still attracts meager amount of readers and other artistic deals. In fact, the controversial novel has taken another step forward when it was announced that it's to be made into a BBC miniseries.

Rowling has closed an exclusive adaptation deal with BBC One and BBC Drama. The said miniseries will be produced by Rick Senat and by the independent production company by Neil Blair, who is JK Rowling's agent.

Much like with Harry Potter movie adaptations, Rowling will "collaborate closely" with the project. No further details have been given yet regarding the number and length of episodes, but it is scheduled for a 2014 airing.

As to what JK Rowling felt about this new progress, she said, "I always felt that, if it were to be adapted, this novel was best suited to television and I think the BBC is the perfect home."

Who do you think is fit to play the various characters in the novel? And who is your best candidate to direct the series?