Movie: The Twilight Saga: New Moon

My niece and I enjoyed this film. I'm a HUGE fan of the book series, and was excited to see how this one would translate to the screen. Book to big screen is a tough transition for any book, but this one does manage to stick close to the story. Some may say the film is repetitive, a bit drawn out, and slow paced, but let's face it, so is the book. We should all be grateful that it's not as repetitive as Meyer's original writing (and I say that with great love for her work). Plus, it doesn't hurt to add tons of eye candy! I'm not a fan of the wolf-pack, but I LOVED watching them. Being "Team Vampire", the Volturi scenes are my favorite. As with the "Twilight" film, I wasn't as emotionally affected by the screen version. When I read the book, I was able to go to the same deep dark place as Bella. Watching the film, I did not ... I was unable to feel her desperation and despair. My favorite part of any story is being able to put myself into it, completely - the flood of emotions and feeling every moment as if it were my own. However, I do enjoy seeing other perspectives on how these characters can be perceived. It may not be the same as I see them, but that's why, for any movie based on a book, I am sure to always read it first. Overall it's worth a watch, at least once for everyone ... but I'll be certain to watch again.

kool movie

Would like to see again. Great movie.

goooodddd

the only good thing about this movie is the very very brief fighting scene, If I did not go see for at the free screening I would never had saw it.

So I finally saw Twilight for the first time a few weeks ago and succumbed to the frenzy. I decided to go watch New Moon last night and I liked it.

I liked it for its hunky men, cheesy lines and sub-par acting. There were definitely parts of the movie we laughed at that were overly-cheesy, but its a romance movie about vampires and werewolves. What do you expect?

Movies and sagas like these are meant to transport you to a different world - to entertain, amuse and take you away for a moment. When you go into that theater, you are taking a step away from everything else and putting yourself into the movie. Its a chance to not think about those bills to pay or that paper that is due tomorrow. Isn't that what movies are all about?

I'd see this again and recommend it.

good movie

I went against my better judgment and saw New Moon at midnight last night a few blocks from Georgetown. The movie complex opened up twelve theaters for the premiere. I saw squealing fans, news crews, and more estrogen in one place than I’ve ever been before. To give you a taste, I showed up with my friends at 11:15 to grab seats that others had been saving for us, and the movie didn’t start running until about 12:55 am, 54 minutes behind schedule. I have to admit, while rowdy crowds are not my usual style of movie viewing (I like to have quiet while I’m seeing a movie, especially for the first time) I think it was kind of in keeping with the spirit of the night.

I decided to take Coleridge up to a new level of suspension of disbelief so that I could just enjoy the whole experience. I think you ought to go into New Moon with a specific set of expectations that add up to nothing more and nothing less than a two-hour escape from reality. You just can’t put New Moon on a plane of comparison with Scorsese or Spielberg; to do so is to do a disservice to these greats and also to New Moon director, Chris Weitz. This is not his competition or his goal.

New Moon opens in the aftermath of Twilight (2008); it is Bella’s birthday and Bella and Edward, a real couple now, are out in the open and apparently enjoying life. The audience becomes immediately aware of the pervading animosity between Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) as Jake arrives at school to give Bella (Kristen Stewart) a dream catcher for her birthday – he sensed she might need one.

The first fifteen minutes or so of the movie are pretty flat. It is difficult to feel any happiness in the connection between Bella and Edward, which has to be forced on the audience through allusions to Romeo and Juliet. We are meeting a new, morose Edward whose mood in the film never really flutters above severe depression (just seeing Edward kiss Bella is almost comical – he has mastered the pained face, we get it). New Moon doesn’t pick up its pace until after Bella is almost attacked by Edward’s brother Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) who smells her blood after she gets a paper cut at her 18th birthday party. After a period of inconsolable grief punctured only by Kristen Stewart’s guttural screams as the months pass by on the screen – a horrible idea, but faithful to the text – Bella decides to build motorcycles with her old buddy Jake (as a way of hallucinating about her dead ex-boyfriend, of course) – and the real fun of the plot begins.

As I’ve mentioned before, Taylor Lautner gained 30 pounds of muscle to reprise the role of Jacob. The audience first sees the product of his dedication as he whips off his shirt to stymie a wound in Bella’s head, and it is good. About three quarters of the audience let out audible gasps at this point. It’s nauseating to remember the boy is only 17. Contrast his golden, toned body with Robert Pattinson’s, and Edward pales in comparison (bad pun intended). This movie is all about Taylor Lautner – he’s gone through a transformation just as Jacob Black has and I think it is right to focus on this. New Moon is all about the rising sexual tension between Jake and Bella and the ways in which Bella admittedly uses him and his love for her to get through the toughest point of her young life thus far – the loss of her first love. To be fair, I think Bella is just as unsure of what she’s feeling as he is.

That said, I do think it was a poor choice on Weitz’s part not to include the reason behind the wolf boys’ lack of clothing while human – in the text, Meyer makes it clear that the Quileutes can’t take their clothes with them when they transform; anything they’re wearing when they change is ripped to shreds. Obviously, in hindsight, I think Meyer had a major movie visual in her mind when she added this detail to her novels. And I think she knew her target audience.

However, Meyer and Weitz may have been less on point concerning their target audience’s vocabulary. Their legacy will include the number of lines in New Moon that actually top the “You better hold on tight, spider monkey” idiocy of Twilight. A nice taste of this occurs during what could have been the most sexually tense scene of the movie, when Jacob finally goes in for a kiss with Bella. As he moves toward her, their faces almost touch and he utters what I can only imagine means I love you in Quileute. Please feel free to laugh out loud when you see this.

To be fair, New Moon gets richer as the film progresses; while I freely admit it’s a trite kind of romantic film on the surface, there are must be some deeper issues running through the Twilight Saga than just Bella and Edward’s romance, or the abrupt ending (exactly like the book’s) wouldn’t have garnered such mixed reviews from fans and moviegoers alike. New Moon brought nothing to the table that I didn’t expect: an impossible love story, muscular male bodies, the first stirrings of future issues in the saga (between the werewolves and the vampires, the Cullens and the Volturi, and Bella and Edward as they contend with the obvious issues that come with transformation and eternity) and just enough ridiculous dialogue to remind me that this is a story meant to entertain tweens but which, on opening night, captured the fantasy of at least twelve theaters full of adult women in Georgetown alone (not to mention a healthy dose of reluctant boyfriends and a smattering of shameless male fans). No matter what you say about Stephenie Meyer, I think the Twilight Saga is officially here to stay.

like it!!!