Twilight

Damn, Kristen Stewart looks young in the movie cover. That actually works well for the movie though. This movie is a mega blockbuster of epic proportions, the first in a line of widely hated yet just as widely loved stories of a girl in love with a vampire, but I don't give a shit about any of that. I don't care about the movie's reputation, I care whether I like it or not, and for me, the story here sucks me in. The essence of this movie is a story of a young, gawky teenage girl falling in love for the first time with a boy she sees as perfect (don't we all view our first loves that way?) I care about the characters, I relate to their struggles, and thus I dig the movie.

Well, sort of. The first time I saw this movie I had JUST finished reading the book, and the book is way better than the movie (as it often is) so I spent the whole movie being pissed off that they "screwed it all up." This second viewing took place over a year after I'd read the book, so I had enough distance to appreciate the story they told rather than the story they failed to tell. There are still too many jump cuts in the movie for my taste, and the film still leaves out too many important details for me (and adds long scenes that don't make much sense when it could have been including the shit it cut out that would have made more sense) but the movie isn't as bad as I remember.

The Twilight saga tells the tale of Bella swan, an ordinary teenager coming to live with her father in the small town where she was born (she hasn't lived there in years). She tries to fit in at school, but soon falls madly in love with an aloof, strange teenage boy named Edward. she finds out that Edward acts so strange because he's a vampire (but really he just acts like a teenage emo boy, which is the kind of boy I'd have fallen in love with too when I was 17). Edward lives with a "family" of vampires who refuse to feed on humans, but there are other less scrupulous vampires around, and Edward has to protect Bella from these other vampires. Fun times ensue.

People hate on these movies way too much for my taste. I never got into the Harry Potter stories...I'd rather gouge my eyes out with a rusty fork than read the books, and yes I have tried, more than once...I don't DO fantasy unless it takes place in OUR world. I don't like the Lord of the Rings books either (oh scandal)or the Chronicles of Narnia, they're not my thing, I don't care, I can't get into them, I'd rather eat broken glass. But thing is, even though I don't like the books, I don't go around bashing people who DO like them. The fuck do I care what other people read? Seriously? So I can understand that people don't like the Twilight series. that's fine. I don't care if other people like them or not, I just care that I like them. What I don't get is why in Sam hell people need to bash people who DO like the movies and books. Don't you have something better to do with your time than to care what I read and watch? Really? Can't you come up with something more intelligent to say than "These books are GAY!" Oh God no, GAY is the worst thing to be. Ew. Some people need to grow up (and the gene pool needs some SERIOUS chlorine, stat).

So anyway, yes, I love these books, and yes, I like this movie. It's much better than I remember from the first time I watched it.