Saw the Twilight movie...
....and here are my fresh thoughts about it.
Yep, yep, I really liked the Twilight movie, and I don't quite understand why it has received so many bad reviews. I thought it had an artsy feel (that should please the critics) and both Rob and Kristen were good (though Kristen overdid the heavy breathing a bit).
However, for me the biggest "thumbs up" came from when comparing the movie to the book. The movie omitted my biggest pet peeve about the books, the amateurish writing, and balanced the plot much more nicely by bringing James and the killings in right from the start. I don't remember the killing of Charlie's friend being in the book at all, but that was good for bringing in some emotion and driving the action plot.
The dialogue between Bella and Edward was improved and matured quite a bit, and I particularly liked the moody, temperamental Edward throwing a tree around in the meadow scene instead of the prissy "you're so purty" cooing of the book scene. It gave Edward's character a nice wave of depth and color. And I loved how he sat above Bella in the tree while talking to her in the same scene; it had a nice touch of humor (at least I smiled;-). Oh, and I thought Jacob was adorable, too!
The baseball scene was great; hard to imagine how they've managed to create such stuff with such a low budget. Also, the end battle was very well done, and James taping Bella had real creepiness to it. All in all, the story had enough emotion and tension between the main characters, which in the books was lost (to me) among the wordiness and the screaming dialogue tags.
And you know, now I finally GET IT. I get the allure of this story - I sensed the emotion everyone's been raving about while I've looked like a live question mark. The story has good building blocks, and they were used well in the movie.
Yep, yep, I really liked the Twilight movie, and I don't quite understand why it has received so many bad reviews. I thought it had an artsy feel (that should please the critics) and both Rob and Kristen were good (though Kristen overdid the heavy breathing a bit).
However, for me the biggest "thumbs up" came from when comparing the movie to the book. The movie omitted my biggest pet peeve about the books, the amateurish writing, and balanced the plot much more nicely by bringing James and the killings in right from the start. I don't remember the killing of Charlie's friend being in the book at all, but that was good for bringing in some emotion and driving the action plot.
The dialogue between Bella and Edward was improved and matured quite a bit, and I particularly liked the moody, temperamental Edward throwing a tree around in the meadow scene instead of the prissy "you're so purty" cooing of the book scene. It gave Edward's character a nice wave of depth and color. And I loved how he sat above Bella in the tree while talking to her in the same scene; it had a nice touch of humor (at least I smiled;-). Oh, and I thought Jacob was adorable, too!
The baseball scene was great; hard to imagine how they've managed to create such stuff with such a low budget. Also, the end battle was very well done, and James taping Bella had real creepiness to it. All in all, the story had enough emotion and tension between the main characters, which in the books was lost (to me) among the wordiness and the screaming dialogue tags.
And you know, now I finally GET IT. I get the allure of this story - I sensed the emotion everyone's been raving about while I've looked like a live question mark. The story has good building blocks, and they were used well in the movie.