Twilight of Bookmonkey: Day Twenty-Six

I spent today listening to the soundtrack to New Moon, and divorcing it from the film – I’ve got to say that it is pretty good. It starts with the tune Meet Me On The Equinox by Death Cab for Cutie, which is a fun, moody start to the album. Although many of the songs on this disc are slower or darker than those in the soundtrack to the first album it is a lot of fun.

Also – the final song, a theme from the film’s score is simply called New Moon (The Meadow) and really blew me away, as much as I hated the score to Twilight, I’ve got to say the stuff done by French composer Alexandre Desplat is complicated and in Bella’s words “Kinda beautiful.”

With one more post dedicated to my month of Twilight, I’ve got to say that hands down the soundtrack have been the best part of this experience, as they both seriously impressed me, and I’ll definitely be checking out the soundtracks for the remaining films.

Twilight of Bookmonkey: Day Twenty-Five

I just finished New Moon - and you know what, with the exception of the things I didn’t like in the novel (Bella spending months doing nothing as Edward left), and the fact that the original is definitely a better film, there were a few ways I prefered this movie to the original.

The colour of the movie (warm browns) and the visual effects were significantly better than the first film. The music was also quite good (although playing a slow dirge-like song while having a pack of werewolves chase a vampire through a forest seemed like a strange choice). I still liked Billy Burke in the small role of Bella’s father, and both Michael Sheen and Dakota Fanning were effectively scary as members of the Volturi (the royal family of the vampire world), the score was also significantly better than that of the first film.

On the negative side, the film drags a lot, it’s pacing seemed kind of strange and the sequence where Edward leaves Bella made me think of the kid from The Yearling sending away his deer (it is interesting that as much as the Cullen’s resent other vampires considering Bella a “family pet,” they treat her like a pet they would like to get rid of when they move. Also (and this is the fault of the source material), Victoria comes across as a cameo rather than a threat - although she kills people in this film, it’s all off screen and therefore doesn’t seem to be to much of a threat.

In the end the film was ok, unlike the first film it did actually have some horrific parts in it (I mentioned these in my review of the book), and as the characters had been set up in the previous film, there was very little explanation needed in this film.

Twilight of Bookmonkey: Day Six

Currently I’m just over 320 pages into New Moon. Unlike the first book, which I consider a pretty okay Young Adult supernatural romance novel, this book is pretty weak.

Basically Edward, who spent the entire first book saying “I’m no good for you baby, maybe I should go...” finally makes good on his promise and leaves. After this we are left with Bella whining unendingly about the “hole in her chest” that was torn out when Edward left. She doesn’t do anything for months... literally, there is a chunk of the book with chapter headings and nothing else, explaining that as time went by nothing happened.

You know, I don’t mind reading books where very little happens, but absolutely nothing? And worse yet, nothing narrated by an incredibly self-involved teenaged girl. I’m doing my best to give this series a fair shake, but this book is really testing me.

Here are my main problems so far

1) Bella is not scared of her boyfriend. The fact that Bella has absolutely no fear of Edward or any other member of his family has effectively de-fanged these vampires. If they don’t scare a teenaged girl, they can’t really be that scary. (I will note that if Bella was scared of Edward and loved him anyway the book would have unfortunate parallels to Domestic Violence so I don’t have a better solution for this.)

2) Not a lot is happening in book two – Bella is sad, and hundreds of pages go by while she acts like a jerk to everyone around her.

3) There are no “on-screen” fight scenes. Both the fight between James and the Cullens in Twilight and the fight between Laurent and the Werewolves in New Moon happen away from our narrator so we only hear about them after the fact.

Here is what I like so far

1) Charlie Swan. Bella’s dad and the Chief of police in the town of Forks seems like a pretty cool guy working with a very difficult daughter. I wish I could bake the guy a cake and say, Don’t worry man, some of us see how great a Dad you are.

Coming up this weekend, I start Eclipse and check out the first movie – Horay!