Twilight

On Thursday night after the baby shower I went with a bunch of girls from my ward to see a midnight showing of the Twilight movie.


Oh yes, a midnight showing. Of the Twilight movie.

I feel like I should be ashamed, but...meh.

Anyway, due to shower clean up I missed the standing in line outside in the freezing cold part. I did, however, get to sit around in a theater full of Twilight freaks (teenage girls and Melody) for 2 hours waiting for 12:10 to roll around. It was really fun! Especially because some of the girls I was with had had a little Red Bull (and some are just naturally a little on the nuts side).

And, as it turns out, one of my very pregnant friends can put her feet behind her head. We have pictures. And there was this girl with really fancy hair that we were all just kind of really intrigued by and Melody kept trying to get a picture of her.


The poor girl HAD to know something was up.

I think Bethany S. (left) and I were trying to hide and distance ourselves at this point since Melody was standing up on her chair trying to get a picture of the poor girl from the pic above:

(Bethany P. (right) had a Werewolf girl shirt on. Wooo Team Jacob!)

Anyway, the movie itself was much like the books: some good, some bad, some lame, but overall enjoyable. It was worth my $10.

I thought it was well adapted but I did kind of feel like we were asked to just accept that a lot of stuff we didn't see happened between Bella and Edward at the beginning of the movie that caused them to fall in love. It felt really abrupt..they were bickering a lot while she tried to figure out what was up with him and then there are a few scenes of them talking set to music and then BAM! Willing to die for each other. I felt kind of cheated. A little more development would have gone a long way.

Also, the dialogue was kind of bleh. A lot of it was taken straight from the book. But here's the thing: Stephenie Meyers? Not a super awesome writer. Good story teller? Absolutely. But her writing leaves a lot to be desired. The person who adapted the book should have played with the dialogue to make it less wooden and more believable.

I was surprised by how much I loved many of the actors. Charlie, in particular, was a surprise favorite. I also loved Jacob (except his teeth were a leeeetle too perfect for a kid on the res), Rosalie (holy mother of butts, did you see her in those baseball pants? I added squats and lunges to my workouts solely based on the inspiration of 1.5 seconds of her walking away in one scene), Emmett, Esme, Victoria (hot! Want her hair), Alice, even the kids at school. Although, the attempts to PC-up the school by making a small northern town in very northern Washington all racially diverse was a little unnecessary. I've been to northern Washington. It's pretty white, my friends.

I hated the makeup. HATED. It was painfully bad. As one of my friends (Janssen, I think) said, "Vampires are supposed to be freakishly gorgeous. Not just freakish." Amen. When we first see Carlisle walking into the hospital room I wanted to cry. They ruined him with powder.

I surprised myself by not being very fond of Kristen Stewart. I rented In the Land of Women specifically to check out her Bella playing abilities and came away confident that she was perfect. Fair of skin and dark of hair, angsty, a little needy and vulnerable, perfect. But then she took it to the next level and got super twitchy. In the scene at the end when she's in the hospital bed and telling Edward he can't leave her I was like "STOP BLINKING!" It was like she had some kind of blinking disease. And a lot of the scenes where Bella wasn't frightened but should have been, K. Stew played her like she was scared. And I was confused because she'd be all, "I'm not scared." And I'd be like, "Could have fooled me."

And then I suprised myself even more by not hating Robert Pattinson as Edward. I think maybe he doesn't photograph well because he came across on movie film very different than he did on photo film. I believed him, even when he seemed kind of stoned. And when he lightened up a bit I really liked him. He fit the bill, much to my (and a lot of other people's) surprise.

I think my biggest disappointment was Jasper- probably because I love him so much in the books. What made the director play him like a zombie? I'm so confused. This is a vampire/werewolf movie. No zombies. And I'm fairly certain it was intentional because Jessica described him to Bella as, "the one who looks like he's in pain." He just kind of shuffled around with his eyes really wide, occasionally making sort of lame comments. It was really sad.

Also, it has to be said. When Edward is playing Bella's lullabye and it's all misty and she's lounging in the background all seductively? There was a lot of snorting coming from our row. In particular from Catherine, who snorted through most of the movie, but I had to agree with her there.

Fortunately, the movie doesn't really expect us to take it seriously. The books had fairly little humor. They were too busy being angsty to find time for funny. But Catherine Hardwicke found ways to lighten things up and the theater giggled through a lot of the movie. I was giggling right along with them and I'm sure I'll be renting the movie at some point for a repeat viewing (Aaron will be free that night. Anyone want to hang out with him?).

AND! They're doing New Moon. Which is The Jacob Book. Whee!