New Moon: I'm on Team Steve

My husband loves me.... a lot.

How do I know? I know, beyond the Valentine's Day breakfast and the fact that he empties the dishwasher every morning before heading out to work. I know, with full certainty, because on Friday night, he agreed to come see New Moon with me and a theater full of screaming teenagers. The man is nothing short of a saint.

And when I ooheed right along with the barely pubescent audience when Edward (Robert Pattinson) came on the screen and when Jacob (Taylor Lautner) took off this shirt, he didn't get up and walk away, disgusted with his silly wife. He gave me a little amused look, and turned back to the movie, no doubt planning all the war movies he was going to get us to see now that he had agreed to this vampire flick.

I loved the Twilight books. I began Twilight last Thanksgiving and didn't come up for air until Christmas when I finished Breaking Dawn. But I was bitterly disappointed by the first Twilight movie. I found the acting stilted and the special effects comical.

But New Moon was a different story. I'm not sure if it was the bigger budget, the new director, or Jacob's incredibly buff body, but it worked. The acting hit the right note. The special effects were credible. And the colors and scenes in Italy with the Volteri were striking. I still struggled with some of the Edward lines to Bella, a little too intense and serious to be taken seriously. I may get crucified for this by all the Edward fans out there, but I just wanted to tell him to lighten up! But then again, I had the same frustration with the book, probably due to the fact that I'd rather crawl into a warm and comfy bed than a cold and hard one. The nail in the Edward coffin, as far as I'm concerned, were the sparkling body scenes that still didn't look right, and when he took his clothes off for the Volteri.

But after all the gossip about whether Taylor Lautner would be able to bulk up enough to play the movie, and all the pressure for him to quit, I had to admire how he rose to the challenge. He not only looked amazing, completely believable as a scrawny boy overnight metamorphasized into a werewolf, but he also acted the part perfectly. The bulk of the movie was on his shoulders and he carried it well. The werewolf special effects and scenes were amazing, making these massive creatures into bonafide characters, no small feat when you're talking about monstrous wolves. And Taylor Lautner straddled the balance of moody teenager raging against this massive change in his life and pining Bella fan and gave the film the tension it needed, and that I was hoping it would have.

I guess this makes me firmly in Team Jacob, at least for this movie. But really, I'm with Team Steve, the man who endured all of this Twilight fanaticism and pretended to enjoy it!

Coming Out of a Twilight Induced Daze

It's been a week since I finished Breaking Dawn, book four in the Twilight saga, and it's literally taken me this long to emerge from the dream-like state the books plunged me into. I started reading Twilight over Thanksgiving and just became completely obsessed. I devoured the books, jumping from one to the next without stopping. I carried them everywhere and sneaked in a few pages whenever I could: while waiting for the microwave to finish the peas, while keeping an eye out for the bus, and mostly, every night until very very late. When I finished, I felt free again - although I'm sure Stephenie Meyer will write more about the Cullens and I'll be right on line waiting to get my copy.

Although I read and enjoyed some Ann Rice books years ago, I didn't think I would like Twilight. Vampire fiction is not a genre I gravitate towards, especially not when it's in the young adult category. But after reading so many posts about how excited my blog friends were about the Twilight movie, I decided that I had to see what all the fuss was about. And that's how I get hooked, or ... bitten. (sorry, couldn't resist).

Once you pick up the first book, it's easy to see what all the craze is about. The Twilight books are well written and very suspenseful. It's basically a very suspenseful love story. Bella Swan is a teenager who moves to Forks, Washington to live with her dad when her mother remarries. On her first day in her new high school, she sees an eerily handsome boy, Edward Cullen, who seems to be repulsed by her. She is immediately drawn to him. It turns out that he is equally obsessed by her, but wants to stay away from her because he's not sure whether he can resist drinking her blood.

As I'm writing the storyline, I'm cringing at how corny it sounds. I suppose it is to a certain degree. But reading Twilight brought me back to my romantic high school days when I waited for the boys I "loved" to magically call and ask me out. Bella Swan sees herself as an ugly accident-prone duckling but all the boys (including a vampire) at Falls High fight over who gets to save her. Stephenie Meyer is a master of character development and I could picture the high school cafeteria scenes vividly as I read.

I saw the Twilight movie after finishing the first two books, and I was thoroughly disappointed. Although Edward and Bella were well cast from a looks perspective, their acting was very stiff. The special effects were laugh-out-loud ridiculous. I understand that they had a low budget, and I'm hopeful that they'll beef up the special effects for the sequel. The worst part of the movie for me was the "father" vampire, Carlisle. He is played by Peter Facinelli who looks like a California bleach-blonde twenty-something surfer and every time he appeared on the screen, the movie lost what little credibility it had managed to build up for me. The other possible issue for the movie sequel is that Book 2 (New Moon) is the weakest of the four. Perhaps they'll combine two and three. I don't regret seeing the movie - I really thought that Robert Pattinson was the perfect person to play Edward, and books 3 & 4 were better once I pictured him as I read it, and the same goes for Ashley Greene as Alice.

If you have one week ahead of you, I strongly recommend that you pick up a copy of Twilight. You will plunge into a wonderful world of escapist fiction. I also strongly suggest giving the movie a miss, especially if you haven't read the book. You will end up dismissing the entire series and that would really be your loss.