Thursday, July 15, 2010

'Cause I Saw Eclipse

K, I'm about to make a blasphemous statement, so just hold on to your seats alright peeps?

*deep breath* Well... I saw Eclipse... See, now I should just leave it at that and just let you assume the laughs but yeah, okay, that's not exactly fair now is it?

Okay... I can do this. I'd appreciate it if you didn't hate me for this...

Well... Eclipse wasn't really...

Dang, this is more difficult than I thought.

*'nother deep breath* It wasn't that bad.

Woosh, alright. Okay, okay, yes I know, the horror. But, I'm not going to lie and say it was apocalypticly bad when it wasn't.

Now was it good? You'd have to be a fan of the genre to think that. And I'm not. So no, my biased opinion claims nay, but it wasn't painful to watch or anything. How about this: It was decent.

Fair enough?

Now, hold your tomatoes and let me explain why I think this. There were a lot of things about Eclipse the book that I disliked. Lots of random, going nowhere plot points, characters I didn't care about, and, to be perfectly honest, blatant sexism in a few places. Not cool. Not cool at all.

Well, the director of Eclipse must've agreed with me, because he took those things and either quietly did away with them or changed them so they weren't so stupid. For example, *for anyone who actually cares, there's a SPOILER ahead* near the end of the book, Edward and Seth (some werewolf punk) are facing off with an evil vampire who wants to kill Bella. Seth apparently gets injured and things aren't looking so hot for our favorite sparklepire so Bella decides to be all noble and distract the evil vampire by stabbing herself in the heart and letting the blood drive the vampire nuts. if I'm remembering this correctly (I mean, when did I last read the book?) she's stopped somehow, evil vampire dies anyway, and the world is happy. Later, Edwardo gets all PO'd at her and says that Seth was only feigning injury or something and that he himself was fine and she was being stupid and yada yada yada. So, to summarize, Bells (although she approaches it wrong) decides to be useful, and gets blasted for it. The entire scene was useless- it built up to something that didn't actually happen...

In the movie, same scene happens however, Bella is smart and realizes that in cutting yourself, you don't actually have to die, so she cuts her arm instead (she's not stopped, since Edward's in a bit of a scrape), thus distracting the not-so-nice but still sparkly vampire and allowing Edward to remove her of her head. So, same scene, just... smart? Oh yeah, and she doesn't get yelled at for it later either.

Jacob is kind of a tool, but he was a tool in the book too (a distinct contrast from his personality in the second one where he was a goober, but a harmless one- a sign of bad writing indeed) so I can't really fault anyone for that. To be quite frank, in regards to the little love triangle between Edward, Bella, and Jacob, I don't think Bella should have picked either of them. One's a depressing control freak and the other one's a prick. (Seriously, when I guy takes out the engine of your car to prevent you from seeing someone, that really ought to raise a red flag.)

But was it horrible? No, not at all. It was alright. It took the idea of the book, removed all the crap, added a few jokes, and converted it into a movie that won't make your eyes bleed. It was easily better than it's predecessors (not that that's hard, although New Moon wasn't completely awful either, it was just lame) and, although I probably won't watch it again, I can't quite fault anyone for liking it.

Breaking Dawn? Now that I'm excited for. Seriously, that book was bad. I mean, really bad. I'm hoping for a few unintentional laughs if that's-

Wait, it's being directed by Bill Condon? That same guy who did Dreamgirls and Chicago?! Both of which won several Academy Awards?!?!

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wait, they're copying Harry Potter 7 and splitting it into two movies?

But, but, but, but- WHY???

Nevermind. Not excited. Goodbye.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

In Which I Haven't Updated in Way Too Long...

So yeah... sorry 'bout that. No, I'm not dead or anything. Just lazy.

So yeah, summer. Whoosh. Let me tell you, I have honestly been gone every other week. Which is totally weird frankly- I've never been gone this much in the summer time. Actually, by the time school starts, I'll have been gone a grand total of five weeks. There's eight weeks of summer. Do the math.

First vacation- Girl's Camp. Which was okay... I guess... The theme was very cool- superheroes- so there's some good stuff there. Every ward was supposed to pick a superhero as sorta our mascot, and ours was Optimus Prime. Once again, very cool. Some of the other wards picked liked, Wonder Woman, Super Girl, stuff like that, all of which are legit and cool too. One of them picked Rosie the Riveter randomly. I was kind of like "what?" but I ended up accepting it once I saw some of the laughable stuff the other wards had picked. Some of them I guess decided it was okay to start making up their own so we ended up with things like "Virtue Girls" and "Shikara" (which I guess for all I know could actually be a real one, but she's drawn in Japanese anime style so I'm automatically entitled to make fun of it anyway). Also, one of them picked the "Fair Maidens". *sigh* I don't know how you get princesses out of superheroes (Xena: Warrior Princess maybe? But if that was point... well they obviously missed it.) but I guess it was bound to happen.

Haha funny story. Our camp, with our Optimus Prime, was stationed right next to the "Fair Maidens" camp. And trust me, the two campsites... well, you could say they looked very different. To give you an idea, this was our logo:
...and theirs went something like this:
So yeah... I think they missed the point.

Second vacation- EFY. I'd never been before so this was all a new experience for me. Two of my best friends on the face of the planet were going to be there, (one of whom was to be my roommate) so that had pretty much guaranteed before hand that even if it sucked, it couldn't be all that bad. It didn't suck, but I think it deserves it's own post, so I'll save the details.

Third vacation- Ramah, New Mexico. I've been there at least a million times, but it always manages to be fun. More details later? That would probably be easiest.

But anyway, the here and now! Fourth vacation- Washington. Well, I'm currently in Utah, but that's besides the point. I'm staying with my uncle and aunt currently (Dallan and Stephanie, for those who are curious) and so far it's been pretty fun. I've pretty much been (literally) bombarded by my cousins with love and hugs (my sleeve is being violently tugged on as I speak... er write) but they love me so it's cool.

Haha, another funny story. So the last time I saw my cousins, they stayed at my house for a week. I had them watch Cats. Soooooo, I walk in the door two days ago and the first thing the older one says to me, at 100 works a minute, is "Oh Shauntel! I love that Cats movie you showed me; I think I'm going to buy it." Not a "hi" or a "sup" or even a "what are you doing here you freak", just a, well, that. Stephanie explained to me that ever since they watched it, they've listened to it non stop and kept the DVD for months when they rented it. She's happy with it though. As am I. I'm actually rather proud of myself for converting them.

Anyway I suppose I sorta lied since I'm not actually in Washington yet, but I'll get there eventually. It's funny though. I mean, I'm in Utah. And as most people know, I like to make fun of Utah. It's fun. However, I'm quickly running out of fodder, since so far all the stuff I've seen has been awesome. Plus, you can look at the sky (which, turns out, is blue, and not grayish) and not hurt your eyes.

Also, everything is green. It's kinda weirding me out.

But whatev. That's the Arizonian in me speaking. And we all know Arizona is still the best state ever.