Playing the Critic

I'm going to do a book/movie review to recap my weekend. Because this pretty much was my weekend. 1. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer - The much anticipated fourth and "final" installment of Stephenie Meyer's teenage vampire romance saga. I say "final" in quotations because I am in no way convinced that this actually was the final book. She left way too many questions unanswered and way too many loose threads that I know she's just dying to come back and explore later on. And tons of new characters that are screaming for more page time. Plus, she's already admitted to working on a fifth book called Midnight Sun, which coincides chronologically with book 1 (but told from Edward's point of view), but for which I am sure we will have to have another midnight party at the bookstores the night of its release. Other than the Harry Potter books, I think Breaking Dawn is the only book to share the honor of the
midnight release party. I went to the last Harry Potter party, and that was more than I could handle. So I opted out of this one - something about the prospect of hundreds of teenage girls dressed up in prom dresses/vampire costumes and gushing over Rob Pattinson kind of turned me off.
Anyway, Amazon was taking way too long to ship my book so I called and reserved a copy at Barnes & Noble, which I picked up promptly when they opened at 9 am on Saturday. Now I will have to figure out what to do with my second copy of the book when it finally turns up later this week. I started reading as soon as I got in the house. And I must say, I was immediately disappointed. I didn't like the direction the main characters were taking. They had lost something of their former selves - I found them flat and forced, not developed, but being manipulated toward the end goal of the book. Also, the first few hundred pages of the book were just plain creepy. And inappropriate. I was actually rather shocked by the inappropriateness, especially considering that the author is allegedly a devout Mormon (assuming she hasn't been excommunicated yet, based on her books).

Okay, so I made it through the first few hundred pages extremely disappointed. It was way more horror novel than cute, fun vampire romance. Then I get to book 2, which is told from Jacob's point of view. So I am dreading it even more, since I've hated Jacob in the past couple of books. It was also very bizarre, since all of the other books were told from Bella's point of view. But I made myself keep reading, and actually, I liked Jacob a lot better in this book. Reading from his point of view actually provided some much-needed comic relief after the gruesomeness of book 1. Plus, there was the part where he got to drive Edward's Aston Martin Vanquish (I gasped out loud when I read the name of the car, since it is only the most fabulous car EVER) that helped redeem it for me.

By the time we got back to Bella in book 3, things had improved drastically and I found myself devouring the remaining pages. SPOILER ALERT: I was so happy that Renesmee turned out to be really sweet, and not a hideous mutant after all, and that Bella was FINALLY a vampire after much screwing around, and it was really cool to meet the vampires from all the covens all over the world. After making it all the way through to the end, I began to understand why the beginning had to happen the way it did - so I guess the end justified the means. And everyone got their happily ever after. Yea! :)

2. The Dark Knight

Okay, so I finally saw Batman Begins for the first time on Friday. It was pretty awesome, so we decided to go see The Dark Knight. It was also pretty awesome. It was way less intense and creepy than I thought it was going to be - I'd heard so much about how "dark" the movie was. I didn't really think it was that much darker than Batman Begins.


Heath Ledger was fantastic as the Joker. Just straight up crazy and kind of hilarious at times. Cy and I have been quoting the Joker saying "Kill. . .the batman" all day. Overall, good movie with crazy stunts and cool technology. Cy and I both really liked it because it was fairly realistic - they explained the technology behind everything. It wasn't just that Batman was magical and could fly, etc. - there were reasonable explanations for everything.

Except for Two-Face. SPOILER ALERT: Two Face was the creepiest part of the movie for me. And the least realistic. I mean, there is no way you could just be walking around shooting people when half of your face was burned off. Plus, it was so disgusting. I am glad that he lasted only the duration of the movie; I couldn't have handled an entire movie looking at his mutilated face. Especially when the other half of his face still looked like Aaron Eckhart.

The second thing that bugged me about the movie (and this bugged me in Batman Begins too) was Christian Bale's bizarro Batman voice. It kept making me want to laugh and I couldn't figure out why. And then all of a sudden it hit me: his Batman voice totally sounds like Rex Kwon Do from Napoleon Dynamite. I could just picture Batman saying: "Nobody wants a roundhouse kick to the face when I'm wearing this bat suit!" And then I couldn't stop laughing when he talked. Kind of ruined it for me a little bit.