Lisa’s Tuesday Perspective: Alex Reads Twilight

Hello, lovelies.  As you may have read in Isabelle’s post yesterday, things are a little hectic in my life at the moment.  Impending wedding, along with some new professional opportunities have put me well behind on my reading.  I wanted to share a little something that is really sorely tempting me to waste a lot of time lately, or rather, someone.

This someone is Alex Day.  He’s a musician who’s found a kind of quirky (and smart!) way to get himself out there on youtube.  He not only vlogs, but he also does a lot of commentary videos, and right now he’s working his way through Twilight, with commentary on the chapters as he reads through.  I’ve listened to the first two chapters so far and besides being a refreshing reminder of reading the books myself (though a little different, considering I loved them the first read through!) (and still do, if I were forced to swear to it), Alex has some really fun comments on Bella Swan and Stephenie Meyer’s interpretation of teenagers.  This isn’t really anything you haven’t heard before, but Alex is fun, along with being adorably British, and yes, that does make a difference.

Be forewarned, there is a little bit of language in these vids.

From what I can tell, Alex is up to chapter 18 (16-18 is the vid) and I have a feeling I’ll be ducking in throughout the week to catch up on where Alex is.  I do enjoy it, though.  I think my favorite comment so far is his talking about Bella’s description of Edward’s hair being “bronze,” and how unlikely a description it is.

And since I stumbled along this as well, here’s a taste of Alex’s music, which I actually like quite a lot.

We’re not affiliated with Alex at all, I just found him clever and funny, and maybe you will too.

Movie Magic Monday: New Moon!

Probably there are various people who will kick me off the internet for saying this, but I only watched Twilight once.  I’ve still only seen it once.  The first viewing left me no desire to see it again.  I hated the blue color of everything, and Rob and Kristen, while each very good in other roles just were not hitting Edward and Bella for me.  I wanted Edward to be more graceful and charming than Rob’s constant and impressive I-hate-myself demeanor, and I wanted Bella to have a bit more childlike naïveté and clumsiness.  But that’s just me.  So while of course I knew they were going to go and make New Moon… well.  Despite it being my favorite of the three books (I forget about Breaking Dawn) I didn’t know how excited I’d be about the movie.

Even when I started watching the teaser trailer… mostly I rolled my eyes.  “This is the last time you’ll ever see me.”  Yeah, right, Rob.  I believe you there.  But then.  Oh, then.

Yes, watching Taylor Lautner run to protect Bella and fursplode into a wolf had me BEYOND gleeful.  Oh Jacob Black. Somehow even now I underestimate my love for you.  I admit, Taylor still isn’t my dream Jacob Black.  He’s just not who I see when I read.  But the kid is just so darn HOT cute.  And he loves the character so much, that I can’t help but adore him in the film.

My other hesitance to see it was the obvious focus on the action and the Volturi.  I mean… it looked like a vampire movie. hahaha  And I did not read the Twilight Saga for the action.  I read it for the werewolves, obviously.

That said, with the money they raked in over Twilight, of course this was going to be a better-made movie.  You could tell from the trailer alone that this was going to be well… more like a real movie.  And heaven help it, it almost was.

I was impressed right off the bat that they used not only the quote from the beginning of New Moon, but the prologue moment from the book as well.  Immediately I sat up a little bit straighter in my seat, and perked up.  I did mention this was probably my favorite of the books, right?  The pacing was just off from the beginning, though.  It felt stilted and rushed at the same time, if somehow that’s possible.  They were skipping right over all the sweet little moments between Edward and Bella that makes them enjoyable, and while Edward definitely smiled more in this film, the sense of humor that sparkles on the page (yes, even more than his skin, if I do say so myself) just was not  there.  In fact, I kept looking at Rob and thinking, why is he smiling right now?  Wasn’t he just angsting about Jacob?

The minute Edward and the Cullens skip town, the movie picked up, though.  And not just because it takes less than five minutes (or seeme) before they had Taylor’s shirt off for the first time.  There really is something magnetic about Jacob that I think Taylor captured really well—if anything Bella seemed more in love with Jacob on the film than she had in the book.  While Kristen’s stiff performance still isn’t the Bella in my head, I really enjoyed watching her version of Bella hang out with Jacob.  We didn’t get to see as much as their bonding as I would have liked, but movies do have to fit a certain time slot, so I guess I don’t mind too much.  My one complaint (and this is a slight spoiler but just a teensy one) is that they had Bella telling Jacob that she didn’t like music anymore, when in the book, this is something that Jacob knows without needing to be told—a proof of the close attention he pays to Bella and how well he reads and understands her.

I really enjoyed the Quileute presence in this film though.  Firstly—Graham Greene as Harry Clearwater!  I remember Meyer saying on her site once that she’d like him as Billy Black, but that never would have worked for me.  Maybe because I don’t really like Billy all that much?  I just sort of hold a grudge against him for being so cryptic first about the Cullens and then about Jacob’s change.  I don’t know.  I’m just not much of a fan.  But I just about flipped to see him playing Harry Clearwater.  And I loved that they showed it so that Harry’s heart attack was a result of coming face to face with Victoria—if that was in the book I don’t remember it, but that was an awesome visual moment in the movie, and only Graham Greene could have made it what it was.  The man has a grace and presence that outshone almost everyone else in the film, and he was only in it for about five minutes.

I was also delighted that they kept in the moment with Sam’s fiancée Emily.  Beyond delighted.  It was such a lovely moment in the book, and it was nice to see it’s elegance recognized in the film.  Everybody’s been saying it, but it’s really true.  The Wolf boys made this movie.  In fact, even though Italy is where a lot of the hyped-up action happens, my attention wandered a little bit while they were there.  I snapped back into it when they confronted Jacob in the woods that last time.  Even when Bella and Edward were reunited, they didn’t seem to hit the mark of the little funny/sweet moments between them that makes them so enjoyable.  I’ve got to admit, if I’d never read the books, I’d think Bella was a headcase going from the prettyboy wolf to the pale, emo vamp.

I did think that some of the cinematic moments were nicely done, though.  Bella’s imaginings of Edward were almost how I imagined them (though now that I think about it, the movie didn’t so much as try to explain that) and the “time passing” moment was perfect.  Also… dare I say it seemed like they gave a nod to David Yates using footage from the first film so freely in flashbacks?

So was this movie a lot better than Twilight?  An emphatic yes.  Did it live up to my excessive love of the novel?  No.  But it was pretty far from a disappointment either.  I have to admit that after watching it, I later found myself literally hugging my book.  In fact, I sort of want to go hug it now.  And reread it, immediately.  Meyer, whatever disputes I have with you, your books enthrall me, it’s true.

New Moon gets a B- from me.  It was awkward and badly paced… but Jacob Black lit up the screen, and anybody in the scene with him.

Lisa’s Tuesday Perspective: Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

It was almost exactly two years ago that I first read Twilight.  I know this because it was in the middle of NaNoWriMo—and it was distracting me to pieces.

Yes, of course I’d heard of it earlier than that.  I had a friend on LiveJournal who was beyond obsessed, and occasionally posted some fab fan art of the lovely Emily Browning as Bella, and if it weren’t for that, I may honestly never have read the book.  (Proof that I am a sucker for a pretty face, if nothing else!)  And then admittedly, the cover is gorgeous.  Actually, several of the international Twilight covers are gorgeous, as you’ll see a few sampled in this post.

I was trepidatious at best.  There was so much hype about these books (or so I thought, I should have waited a few months. Sigh) that I was almost positive that they couldn’t live up to it.  But admittedly, by the time I got to Port Angeles (that’s chapter 8, if your memory is fuzzy) I was so hooked I was breathing it in.  This was about the point where I fell for Edward.  I think it’s his extremely violent attitude towards the men who follow Bella down the street leering at her—which really is the worst possible reason to fall for a character, but sometimes it happens, yes/yes?

Before this, I have to admit I’d been squinting at the book a little bit, and trying to make it look less like Roswell in my head (I’m not the only person who’s made this comparison).  But Edward was such a… passionate gentleman, I guess you could say, which is really why anyone has ever fallen for him.  He’s exactly the conundrum women look for and can’t find, an extremely passionate person who’s also extremely polite.  As Anne Shirley puts it, someone who could be wicked… but wasn’t.  I was just as eager to learn about Edward as Bella was.  I even—embarrassingly, now—rolled my eyes whenever that kid Jacob came around, because oh my gosh, I want Edward, thanks.  (This was not to last.  Well, for the most part the Edward-love stuck around, but it was often far outstripped by my love for Jacob Black… but that’s another book. Or three.)

I thought nearly every sentence in the book was witty or clever or quotable.  I loved Bella’s quirky, misanthropic voice.  And I loved how clearly you see every single detail in the books.

I admit, this obsessive love lasted straight through the second and third book, but as many have discovered (or I guess don’t need to discover now that it’s so huge), it was very difficult for me to put my infatuation into words.  Hard to admit, blatantly, that I had even read anything as ridiculous as a book about a vampire that sparkles in the sun.  I didn’t want to talk about it out loud.  (Though I did, without hesitation, force Isabelle to read them with me—she actually finished the series—through Eclipse—long before I did).  I realized later that there is very little defendable about the books (there really is something ghastly about a girl who basically wants to die for her first boyfriend) but it’s something I push away when I’m actually reading the book – because then I just exist in that tiny little world of Forks, and I admit… I sort of like it there.

I’d go into how NOT Emily Browning Kristen Stewart is in the movie, or how when I get through the end of the books, my brain literally hurts when I think about Bella and her decisions, not to mention the fact that Stephanie Meyer sort of sets up “Love” and “Freedom of Choice” as direct opposites in the series… I’d even go into my frustrations as a Harry Potter fan when the two series are compared… but this is about Twilight, the novel.    A novel I’m sort of tempted to go and restart, right now.  Because whatever else I have to say about Stephenie Meyers’ books the fact is, they bring me back.  Time and time again.

So Twilight, the first novel in the series, that simple girl meets vampire book, gets an A from me.