New Moon, Reviewed by Two

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Well, we couldn’t make it to the midnight premiere showing (Thursday night), since getting home at 3:00 on a school night isn’t allowed (much to Peaches’ chagrin), but we did see New Moon last night, on opening day. Luckily, I had purchased the tickets online (movietickets.com) about a week before, as all showings were sold out!

In the lobby beforehand, they were selling Team Edward and Team Jacob shirts. I asked The Peach which one she would get, and she said sternly, “Mom.” (As in, “It’s obvious, Mom. Team Edward.”)

My thoughts on the film: It was OK. If you hadn’t read the book, you might’ve thought it was stupid, because there were a lot of details left out (as with any long book made into a movie, but especially with The Twilight Saga). I thought Rob’s acting had improved quite a bit, as had Taylor Lautner’s. Kristen Stewart, not so much. (They’re just young kids, I know).

WhitePineLane: There were a few parts I really didn’t care for, like the way they portrayed the first three months after Edward left [oops, spoiler alert too late!] They showed Bella curled up on a chair staring out her window, with the season changing outside, and put “October,” “November,” “December” up on the screen as the camera did a 360° around her.

Peaches: Yeah, it was like a Power Point!

Mom [laughing]: Oh! I’m putting that in the post!

Peach: No, Mom, no! What if the cast reads it, and they’ll be all: Oh no you di’n't!

Peaches thought another cool part was when the wolf pack killed Lauren T. (as she calls Laurent). She: “It was like: ‘Hiiiii-YAH!’  And the wolves were like… GIANT!  I hadn’t gotten that from the book!”

We disagreed regarding the difference between the book and the movie. I say Bella did not see Edward when she did dangerous things in the book; she only heard him. Peach thinks she heard him and saw him. Will have to re-read. This is definitely a series that makes me want to re-read (which is rare).

Walking out, we saw this (left), and now we are psyched for June!

The Twilight Saga… in Chocolate

The cake decorator herself!

Silly says: PopStarPeaches celebrated her birthday on Wednesday, November 11th. Although today, Saturday November 14th, she had her party. She invited 3 of her friends. Besides that, this post is about the cake that she made. Her party was Twilight themed. Her cake had the 4 Twilight series books, Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn. They were stacked in a pile. (As I like to call it, a cake pile.) PopStarPeaches decorated the cake on the top with the cover of Twilight, as shown here.

PopStarPeaches and her friends ate the Twilight cake (the top book), but the other cakes, not yet! [Note: As of November 20th, there's still one cake-book left!!]

WhitePineLane’s Edit: Peaches designed this cake herself, as she does every year, and this year she made it and decorated it by herself. Didn’t she do a fabulous job?

Demi Lovato at MOA

Demi waves to the crowd as she leaves

Yesterday we were so excited to go the the Mall of America (MOA) – partly to do school clothes shopping (which, by the way, is a definite FAIL at MOA on a Saturday afternoon….), but mostly because Demi Lovato was going to be there signing autographs!

Our nanny, ecbaby, had found that little tidbit of info online and passed it on to Peaches.  They forgot to look into the fine print, though, and at 10:00am I discovered (to my horror), that you had to have been in line, with your brand new Demi Lovato CD in hand, at 7:00am that morning to get wristbands in order to stand in line for autographs from 1:00pm-2:30pm.  AUGH!

Well, disappointed as Peaches was, we went anyway, and were able to get a pretty good look at Ms. Lovato from the second floor overlooking the rotunda where she was. (A sort of bemused and half-dejected Jordan Pruitt was sitting all alone at the next table, where some girls even passed her by for autographs because they were so busy gazing at the sig they had just gotten from Demi).

My camera, sadly, stinks. So what we had when we got home were 48 fuzzy pics of Demi and Jordan. AUGH again!

Peaches’ take on the experience:  Really disappointed that we hadn’t known about the wristband thing (I mean really, who knew?), but still thrilled to have at least glimpsed them.  Her quote of the day, made after we walked away from the second floor railing:  ”Really Mom, if the floor had been closer to the ceiling, or the ceiling had been closer to the floor, I would’ve jumped down there!”  I love that Peach.  She’s always thinkin’.

Peach is determined that next time one of her favorite celebs is in town, we will be there at 5:00am, to wait for the 7:00am wristbands, to get in line for the 1:00pm signing. Right, Peach. Right.

Twilight: The DVD, Reviewed by three

Image by GeekMom Heather via Flickr

So, we finally saw Twilight last night, on DVD.  Our family rule is that you have to read the book before seeing the movie, and Peaches finished the book last week (and is already a third of the way through New Moon!)  Since we know there’s no way sillycoop would ever read it, and he wanted to hang out with us, he was exempted from the rule for this one!  Here’s our conversation from immediately after the movie ended.

sillycooper:  That was an AWKWARD movie!

Mom:  That was a completely awkward movie, sillycoop!  For the entire first half, I hated it!  The book was 100 times better!

Peach: Not 100 times better….

Silly:   I didn’t think I would like it; it was actually kind of good.

Mom: The scene in Science with Edward and Bella the first day wasn’t very well done.

Peach: Yeah!  It was too short!

Mom:   They didn’t do it at all like it should have been.  Edward looked… maybe slightly angry for about two minutes. They didn’t show him gripping the table or anything.

Peach:  When James, Victoria, and Lauren T. (she calls Laurent “Lauren T.”) came, that was so scary!  I thought Charlie was a lot nicer.  He was so mean in the movie.  And some people, like Erik and Tyler, looked so much different than I thought they would.

Mom: What about the music?

Peach:  The music was really good when they were playing baseball!

silly:  I didn’t really pay much attention to the music except at the end [in the credits] when they had a song by one of my favorite artists, Linkin Park.  Do you know how to spell Linkin Park, Mom?  [I do, sillycoop.]

sillycooper: Is Midnight Sun [Stephenie Meyer's unfinished fifth book in the series, the first tweleve chapters of which have been released on her website] any good?

Mom: SO good!

silly:  What part does it end at?  [sillycoop knows that Midnight Sun is Twilight, but written entirely from Edward's pont of view].

Mom:  In the movie, they combined two important scenes into one:  the scene in the forest where Bella tells Edward she’s figured out what he is, and the scene where they go to the meadow and Edward lets Bella see him in the sunlight.  Midnight Sun ends right before they go to the meadow.  You might like Midnight Sun, silly, since it’s from the boy’s point of view.

sillycoop:  I don’t think I’m really going to read any of them; I was just curious.

Closing thoughts and comments by Mom:

Sillycoop was spot-on in saying it was an awkward movie.  Parts of it were like a 1970s TV show (music included), and parts of it were like a 1990s jiggly, hand-held camcorder cop show.  Rob’s fake accent was god-awful (I read he based it on James Dean.  Why?  Edward is nothing like James Dean!) They would’ve been far better off just letting him speak in his normal voice – I wouldn’t even have cared if they didn’t explain it!

As far as appropriateness, the DVD is rated PG-13.  I have no problem with either of my kids reading any of the books (although we will talk – a lot – during the reading of Breaking Dawn).  The movie did seem to throw in a few extra zingers that weren’t in the book, which I thought was entirely unecessary.  They also didn’t explain a lot of things like Edward and Bella’s love for each other, which seemed to have happened in about a day in the movie, that I felt I had to explain to my son, who hadn’t read the book, and had a hard time understanding the emotions behind what was going on.

It’s always hard to turn a hit book into a movie, and this one, I think, was poorly done on many, many levels.

Our ratings, out of ten:

sillycooper:  5

Peaches:  10  I thought it was good… well, it was just a lot different!

Mom:  5

If you have to choose one or the other, read the book.  And as always, parents – you know your own child best.  There are reasons this film is PG-13.  Only you can decide if your child is mature enough to watch it, and if he or she is mature enough to read the books.

Today’s Hot Topic: Hot Topic

The Peach and I were at MOA (Mall of America for those of you not from the Land of 10,000 Lakes) yesterday. As we were leaving a birthday party at American Girl, we happened to notice a Hot Topic store. I had remembered that Fred Figglehorn (Lucas Cruikshank) makes appearances at Hot Topic stores, but had never actually seen one, so we went in.

First, let’s note that there are probably not two more disparate places at MOA than American Girl and Hot Topic! The music was LOUD and metal (punk? I’m 47 – I don’t know what you’d call it anymore) and the sales guys were pierced. This was no well-lighted Justice, with cute Miranda Cosgove vids playing on big screens as moms and tweens shopped. However, the first thing we spied were Fred shirts on the wall… way better Fred shirts than he has on his own website. Second, a big display of Harry Potter merch, and third… Twiliiiiiiiiight! Ahhhh.

Listening to the lovely music (I joked with Peach that we should get the CD…) we tried to pick our favorite Fred shirt. The sales people we actually very helpful and polite, but they didn’t have the size we needed in any of the Fred shirts. Oh well, no matter. We moved on to the incredible array of Twilight merch.

We’ll do a separate post on our latest obsession, but suffice it to say, they had lots of great Twilight stuff, even some exclusive items, and Peach was torn. Only allowed to get one thing, she ended up choosing their exclusive New Moon tee. Exciting!

We began to walk toward the back of the store, and very quickly realized the key thing you’ll want to know here: Anything a tweener would want or be interested in is in the very front corner of the store. Which is a good thing. Overall, I’d give the store high marks for having really exciting exclusive character items, and I would definitely go there again. They make it easy for you by keeping the more mainstream, younger kid items in the very front of the store. But beyond that front corner, it’s not a store for tweeners. It’s a store for punkers with copious body piercings and strange leather and fishnet outfits. Thank goodness I’m a few years away from dealing with anything like that yet! *sigh of relief*

Peaches says: The people had creepy mohawks that were dyed different colors. The store was creepy, with long necklaces and other gangsta-type stuff. I would go back there, but only for Fred stuff, Harry Potter stuff, and Twilight stuff. I loved the Twilight stuff! The music was kinda creepy too.

Mom: You said “creepy” already twice!

Peach: But that’s the description of the store!

Our conclusion: Some great stuff for tweeners, as long as you stay in the front, and you’re in and out as quickly as possible!

New Duet for Miley and Nick – Are They Back Together?

A few days ago, I caught an interesting tweet from Miley Cyrus and retweeted it here; Miley said she and Nick J. were “in a dark theater ‘writing’ a song together”.

Yesterday, pictures of Miley and Nick Jonas from a video shoot, and a new duet by the former couple that’s been leaked on YouTube, make it look as though they are back together! Is it all publicity or is it real? (They are an adorable couple, and if you listened to Miley’s last album, you know she wasn’t over him!)

The YouTube vid (it’s actually just audio) link is below.  Listen to it then post your thoughts in the comments.  Back together or just publicity, what do you think?  Do you even care?  Here’s what we think:

Mom:  I hope it’s real (but I’m a romantic!).  I think you’ve been able to hear their pain in their songs, and maybe these two cuties belong together!  As for the song, I’m not crazy about it.  It’s OK.  I’m more “interested” in what it says and what it means than “into” the song itself.

Sillycooper:

I personally don’t care for these two. I really don’t watch disney so I don’t know much about them.

PopStarPeaches:

I dunno.  Maybe they are.  I like the song, but I don’t know.  I really like Miley, and the Jonas Brothers– we saw them in concert, and they were all awesome!

Mom:

Will you buy the song when it comes out?

Peach:

Yeah, I would.  Whose CD would it be on?

We’ll have to wait and see.  Both for the CD, and about Miley and Nick!  Fingers crossed!

Update: Miley and Nick’s duet is featured on the Jonas Brothers’ new CD, Lines, Vines and Trying Times, to be released next week. Pre-order here: Lines, Vines and Trying Times