After three weeks of being in social lockdown, I have re-entered my social life with GLEE!  Okay, not the TV show, although I do think it is all kinds of awesome.  I’ve taken “writing” days off since last Wednesday, when I submitted my full manuscript to Dorchester for further consideration in the America’s Best Celler contest.  What constitutes a writing day off?

Like the end of NaNoWriMo, there’s this kind of *crash* that happens after you spend an extended amount of time pouring your heart, soul, blood, sweat, and tears into something.  Except, mine hit after the Final Five were announced.  For those two-and-a-half days before the announcement, I was high on stress.  Not that I know anything about having been high, mind you, but there was this… adrenaline running through me.  I tossed and turned at night when I had expected to fall face-first into bed.  I distracted myself with celebratory dinners with friends, renting movies, and consuming a bottle-and-a-half of wine.

And glorious sleeeeeeeeepppp for something like, um, all day.

Then there was the holiday party I could finally attend!

And, finally, there was New Moon. Three weeks after it’s release, I was finally able to re-join the frenzy and watch the film version of Stephenie Meyer‘s cult hit, The Twilight Saga.  Prior to the Top 10 announcement, I’d been planning to go to the midnight showing on the night of the release.  Instead, I’ve waited three weeks, and was rewarded with no long lines, no crowded theater, and no screaming babies.

And then the movie started.  Disappointment sunk in rapidly.

I confess: I am a purist.  I watched the first film with great frustration that it was not exactly like the book.  (I mean, I know you have to change some things, but… WHY? *sob*)  I tried to like the first movie, and for a while, I convinced myself it wasn’t that bad.  When the DVD came out, I bought it.  Then I went home and played it five times in a row (not all in one day) and started to like it better by the end of the fifth viewing.

But this one?  New Moon?  I’ll say that the second novel was the toughest of the four for me to get through.  I think, mostly because Edward was missing for a good, fat portion of it.  The film version?  I’ll say this:  I didn’t have a problem with the script or the changes they made.  That’s a good sign.  I didn’t even have a problem going sans-Edward for much of the film.  They handled it as best they could, with this ghostly floating Edward that would appear in Bella’s moments of adrenaline-induced hallucinations.

But, I did have a big problem with Kristen Stewart.  She didn’t bother me too much in the first film, though I will criticize her delivery of the “Say it! Out loud!” / “Vampire.” line.  I liked the film enough to forgive the terrible delivery.  But this time around?

I just couldn’t buy it.  I couldn’t buy into her being Bella.  Particularly during the break-up scene, then again when faced with evil vamp Laurent threatening her life, then again in front of the Volturi with Edward being WWF’d (oh, wait, didn’t they change their name to like, WWE? Anyway…) into these marble stairs.

Emotion! I wanted to scream in the theater, growing more and more agitated.  Give me some emotion in the line!

Every time she opened her mouth, the line was flat.  Infused with little to no emotion.  How could I believe in a love so great as Edward/Bella’s when the actress cannot convince me to suspend my disbelief and buy into the emotion?

I bought into every word that came out of Jacob’s (played by a much beefed out Taylor Lautner, see below) mouth.  There was emotion filtered through that voice, need and desire and angst all wrapped up in that corded body, that still-maturing face.

A beefy Jacob Black

A beefy Jacob Black

And then, there was open-mouthed, a-duh looking Bella.  Who couldn’t convince me she was about to die at the hands of a vamp, who couldn’t deliver a line about her love for Edward, and whose shrieks of terror made me wince — not because I was convinced she was having awful dreams and sending chills down my spine in concern for her, but because it hurt my ear drums.

The ever-open-mouthed Bella Swan, so speaks in monotone and without emotion. With a slight, obvious stutter on occasion, such as in that hospital bed scene in the first flick.

The ever-open-mouthed Bella Swan, who speaks in monotone and without emotion. With a slight, obvious stutter on occasion, such as in that hospital bed scene in the first flick.

I might need to watch this one eight more times to convince myself I liked it. =/  Mike, perhaps you and your wife were right.

This, however, was one of the most disjointed and boring movies I’ve seen in a long, long time. It’s about two hours long and you need to chop out about 45 minutes of gloomy staring to get to the actual meat of the story. Even my wife called it “disappointing” and said that she wouldn’t be buying this one on DVD.

Beyond Stewart’s horrible portrayal of Bella, I wished the film had done a better job of handling the delicate relationship between Bella and Jacob.  This film felt very much like a Team Jacob movie (I mean, I can’t lie.  I went “WHOO!” really loud when Jacob whipped his shirt off to wipe the blood streaming down the side of Bella’s head after her motorcycle stunt), and even though I am decidedly Team Edward, I wanted to see more development on the Bella/Jacob side of the story.

To cheer myself up, I had to go and read Cleolinda’s LJ take on it.  After all, last year, she wrote a hysterical entry entitled Twilight in Fifteen Minutes.  And now, the sequel: New Moon in Fifteen Minutes. It’s definitely more entertaining.