Personal Side Note!

Yes, I like my new Nirvana tee a lot.  Thanks for asking, they're really cool.

Now that I got that out of the way, I would like to take the time to write a personal note about the plight I have taken personally, that's right, folks, the plight of the author.  I had a brilliant brain-storm last night (I hate that phrase, but there did seem to be an unforcasted storm up there last night).  I finally dug myself out of the dark, brooding, depressing hole of "WRITER'S BLOCK".  The name is fitting.  Sometimes I feel like I hit a brick wall blocking my way.  Fun, eh?

Aaanywho, I put most of the (figurative) puzzle together, and so did my character, and I'm so excited to write, and I'm just so excited, and I'm thrilled, and....

I don't have time to write.

I love my life.

I just took the time out of English blogging to blog this, blog.

Let Me Be Objective (Critical)

So, yes.  Twilight pandemonium.

(Sorry, I'm watching The Soup while writing this, so I'm snickering while I'm trying to recount my thoughts).

Overall, it was a really good movie.  Getting into the effects and such, the "running" was decent.  People were complaining, but really, it's only like any other modern vampire movie, and specifically, I'm citing Queen of the Damned (yes, it didn't get fantastic reviews).  But the tone in which it was filmed was breathtaking at times, especially with the dramatically green Washington backdrop.  

The dialogue was decent, a few of the lines making the transfer from the novel to the movie.  But I wouldn't advise connecting the two.  I would put as being "loosely based" on the novel, because the director, Catherine Hardwicke, and the writer, Melissa Rosenberg, really morphed the movie so it would be told in a short amount of time, and that it would make sense to everyone.  So if one would go into the theater thinking it is exactly, or almost exactly, like the book, one will most definitely be disappointed.

Now on to the cast.  Yes, the boys were gorgeous, and Kristen Stewart is very pretty, but I found that Robert Pattinson's struggle with his accent hindered his performance, but he carried the part of Edward very well.  Bella, on the other hand, was not as easy to overlook.  Again, it is hard to detach oneself from the book when one recently read it (namely me, but I'm sure I wasn't the only one).  The annoying persistence (which is something I have against the book) of Bella's character, regarding her "love" for Edward, was there.  Stewart pulled it off, but I felt like I saw the same persona in the movie Speak (which I enjoyed very much) that I saw here, which was disappointing, personally.  Bella, novel Bella, grew on me over the course of four hundred or so pages, but it was hard to warm up to this Bella.  Book aside, Stewart's cold style of acting in these roles fit well with the rest of the cast, and as an audience of mostly teenage girls, some things that weren't supposed to be funny were.

My rant being done, I must go to sleep.  I'm tired and still not sure whether I want to go reaf laking (leaf raking, I mean), or sleep in.  I want to help the senior citizens, but I haven't gotten eight hours of sleep in almost a month.  But enough of me.

My final verdict: four out of five stars (being generous)

It managed to hold me captive, just as I as reluctantly held by the novel.

Go see it.

Done With Yet Another Vampire Novel

So, there, I did it.  As promised.

And yes, I have to admit that Stephenie Meyer is a damn good author.

She really did pull me in, and before I knew it, I had almost finished the book.  And truly, it was probably because I'm a teenager and also a self-proclaimed hopeless romantic.

But the entire time, I had a sober voice in the back of my head that would get louder every time I would put the book down to finally go to bed.  

Here's the thing.  Though Meyer spent a good three-hundred something pages growing a relationship, it seemed too short of a time to really build the bond of "I'm not afraid of a vampire, and I love one so much that I would die for him".  Too unrealistic.  While my other friends delighted in all four books of the series, I found myself "sobering up" from "Twilight fever" and looking at it in a realistic way.  The real action came a little too late in the story for me, and Bella was a bit too kluzty.

Not saying that I wasn't totally in love with Edward like every other female, teenage reader.  Yes, he was HOT.  But I simply felt it their relationship was rushed and it was a bit too artifically teenage for an old man and a seventeen-year-old girl.

Must go eat dinner.  I'll post my own movie review later.

Beware.

Yes, that's right.

I went out to Border's (or is it Borders?), and my mom got me Twilight from, that's right, TJMaxx. Whatev.  So I started reading it, and it's like, de javu.  I mean, I read the first chapter a year ago and put it down, but I'll will myself to trudge on.

I'm hoping that after the first chapter, Meyer will enthrall me with her story-telling abilities and I will become one of those lurrrrvly zombies walking the halls of Newington High School, who swear by these books.

We'll see.

This was just to serve as a warning, btw.

I'm waiting to be amazed and be completely sucked in to a swirling black vortex of literature that will have me finishing the entire series in a week.

Perhaps my expectations are too high?

Love of a Different Sort

It is not very advisable to fall in love with a vampire (let's assume, from this point on, they are real, fiction-wise).  So yeah, as I said, unrealistic.  Let's analyze this for a second:

1.  They are basically very, very, very old people encased in younger looking bodies.  (Even the ones who were changed when they were elderly-ish)

2.  Not matter how old they are, they have been immortal for quite some time, and they've seen and experienced things in history that some of us as current mortals would not be able to comprehend.

-Bouncing off of that: Because they were there and lived through it, we could not understand.

3.  Their appearance never changes.  You would have to become one yourself to keep up with him.

4.  Dude, they kill people and drink blood.  Like, guzzle, guzzle, munch, much, gobble, gobble, CHOMP!

5.  They are more likely to receed to their animal instincts (like zombies).

6.  Not all of them are hot, young things.  Only Hollywood and teen fiction have destorted their image into hot teen/twenty-somethings.

7.  They drink blood.

Now, there are a few stipulations, which I probably should have put in the beginning of the post (I do this often, no?):

1.  I love vampires.  

2.  I haven't read Twilight yet.  I know, it's a sin for all of you main-stream vamp lovers.  My opinion on this topic may change if Meyers manages to swoon me with her words.

3.  I'm not saying that any of my characters wouldn't fall in love with vampires, I'm just saying it's not realistic.  And probably not advisable.

4.  I happen to love roleplaying with malicious, hot-tempered vampires because they are more fun than sappy, lovey-dovey, do good vamps.

5.  When reading such mainstream vampire fiction targeted at teenagers, keep in mind to discriminate and not be overswept with delight.  Which is why I adore the Morganville Vampires Series because the main character falls in love with a human boy.

Anyway, that was my rant.  I needed to get it out, because it seemed that as soon as people read said books, they began to think of vampires as humans, which they are clearly not.  Again, I will revert to the recent SNL skit about The View:

"Elizabeth, you need to discriminate!"

I will post an update to my theory after reading Twilight.  I will try very hard not to get sucked into it.

We'll see. n___n