I am not 14 years old

Twilight movie review: spoilers abound, proceed with caution!

I saw the movie last night, and when it was over one of my friends said, "Don't let anyone make you feel bad for liking it." But what if I feel bad because.... I didn't like it as much as I feel like I should have?

What was good:

• Everyone in the cast who WASN'T Edward & Bella. Charlie was AWESOME, all the high school kids were great, Jessica was a surprise treat, and Jacob was darling. The Cullens were mostly okay, except that Emmett's sideways hat was stupid and Jasper looked like a Fraggle.
  
• All the scenes with high school kids interacting like normal high school kids. These were fun and well done and provided great normal contrast to the whole vampire thing.
  
• Sweeping shots of the beautiful Olympic Peninsula. Amazing.
• Scenes with Bella & Charlie. Again, I thought Charlie was the best. I loved how when he showed her around her room and pointed out, "This is a good work lamp." Just exactly like a dad would do.
  
• Vampire baseball. And Alice pointing her toes when she pitches.
  
• The fight at the end--particularly how Alice, well. I don't need to spoil everything, but she's awesome.
  
• Edward popping the dent out of Bella's truck--that was my favorite Edward & Bella scene, which should tell you something.

What was unintentionally hilarious:

• Carlisle Cullen/Peter Facinelli in BAD vampire makeup strolling through the hospital door like it's his first scene of Can't Hardly Wait: "Huntington Hills, kiss my ass!"
• Way-too-skinny Angela saying, "I'm taking control of my life!" and my friend Molly leaning over and whispering, "Girl needs to take control of a cheeseburger."
• Bella Googling "cold ones" and Mac whispering, "Like that wouldn't bring up 'Beer'." And then the phrase "The Immortal Drink" floating past us on the screen.
• Edward reacting to Bella's scent in biology for the first time.
  
• Edward and Billy staring at each other from their cars.
• Edward's sparkly skin. Honestly, he just looked sweaty. Hopefully we get a bigger special effects budget for the next one so the whole skin thing looks a little less stupid.
  

What was bad:

• The screenplay: the narration and all the Edward/Bella dialog in particular. I mean, it's way cheesy in the book, but I thought they were going to make this better? If they thought they did: FAIL.
  
• Robert Pattinson's "acting."
• Kristen Stewart's "acting."

And this is just a note to the young actors of the world everywhere, because I've been noticing this a lot lately: Contorting your face into different variations of "Confused," is not the same as acting. Making weird faces and staring only makes you look weird and stare-y, not intense. And, for the love of God, can we stop moving and sighing and twitching and looking about and doing all kinds of other things with our faces that are NOT acting, are ONLY distracting. Let's try being in the scene, making some choices, and sticking with them, shall we?

My two biggest problems with the movie:

• This was not a good movie; it was a faithful adaptation. There's a huge difference. It was painfully clear to me while I was watching that they were so focused on making fans of the book happy, that they forgot to make a good movie. So, you know, some stuff was good and fun for me, because I like the book and they put that on screen for me. But other stuff was just an uncreative, verbatim lift off the page that didn't translate to the screen at all, so it fell flat.

• My biggest problem with the movie, though, was this: I liked Twilight, and the rest of the series, because while the vampire stuff is fun, it's the whole First Big Important Love story that's really thrilling. First love is THRILLING. Or at least it's supposed to be. It felt that way in the book. In the movie, all the Edward & Bella scenes were drawn out with so many Dramatic! Pauses! Neither of them EVER looked happy to be in each other's company, like, don't they enjoy each other ever? I know there's a whole primal attraction vs Danger! thing going on, but in the book it seemed like they enjoyed and liked each other more. I can't claim credit for this description because I read it somewhere last week, but it's apt--basically, Robert & Kristen just made me feel like they were engaged in a 90-minue-long Intense-Off.

So....not horrible, but disappointing. I'll watch it again on DVD, and I'll check out New Moon for sure (I never thought I'd be on Team Jacob, but for the movies, yeah. For starters, he's WAY CUTER). But overall, it was uneven and fell way short of its potential.

Then again, I am not 14 years old. I'll ask my niece what she thought of it, I bet her opinion is way different.

YOUR Twilight soundtrack

Like many of my friends, I am totally SQUEEEE! over Twilight and read all 4 books and already have my tickets for the movie, etc etc I'm a dork. The movie soundtrack was released a couple weeks ago and I looked it over and was like, what? No.* These are not the Twilight soundtrack songs.

So I made my own soundtrack**:

1. Something Bigger, Something Brighter - Pretty Girls Make Graves
2. Only Happy When It Rains - Garbage
3. Creep (acoustic) - Radiohead
4. Disarm - Smashing Pumpkins
5. You Look Like Rain - Morphine
6. Ageless Beauty - Stars
7. Waiting For The Night - Depeche Mode
8. In Your Eyes - Peter Gabriel
9. Take My Hand - Dido
10. Tacoma Trailer - Leonard Cohen
11. Never Tear Us Apart - INXS
12. Together - The Raconteurs
13. Save A Prayer - Eve's Plum
14. The Horror Of Our Love - Ludo
15. Blood - Pearl Jam
16. The Promise - When In Rome
17. This Modern Love - Bloc Party

If you want I can walk you through my liner notes, but most song choices are fairly obvious, including the fact that my version of the soundtrack is way heavy on bands and songs I liked in jr high and high school and loving boys for the first time, since that is the feeling these books bring back for me. (How Bella feels about Edward = How I feel about "Never Tear You Apart" and that dreamy senior I crushed on.) I also tossed in a heavy dose of songs that remind me of my time in Seattle and the PNW, for obvious reasons.

Now, my fellow Twilight fans, here is the question: What would you put on YOUR Twilight soundtrack??

*I know, I sound like every other hyper-critical Twilight fan out there. "That isn't how I would have done it. That's not who I would have cast. I don't know why they had to change that part of the book." etc etc etc. What can I say? I am a fangirl.

**I also have songs picked out for New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn that I will post later. Cause I'm a nerd and they're awesome.

The Gifted and Talented Adult

These are the books I have packed to read in Las Vegas, primarily because I've already bought them, and feel I should read them already:
To Kill a Mockingbird
In Cold Blood
Mrs. Dalloway
The Gifted & Talented Adult: Unlocking Everyday Genius

This is what I will pick up at the airport and actually read in Las Vegas:
Vanity Fair
US Weekly
Trashy chick lit in which our heroine loses her job/a lot of weight/a fiance/etc, sleeps with the wrong guy, then finds happiness in the form of the nice and surprisingly gorgeous guy who's been there ALL ALONG and totally loves her.

good vs. flawed and ridiculous

"Never feel good. The corruption of the good by the belief in their own infallible goodness is the most bloody dangerous pitfall in the human spectrum. Once you have conquered all your sins, pride is the one which will conquer you. A man starts off deciding he is a good man because he makes good decisions. Next thing, he's convinced that whatever decision he makes must be good because he's a good man. Most of the wars in the world are caused by people who think they have God on their side. Always stick with people who know they are flawed and ridiculous."
~Helen Fielding, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination

In other words, stick with me kids, and you'll be just fine.