The New Moon Trailer: OMG Squee!*

*Dis­claimer: I do not ever say things like “squee” or other words usu­ally belong­ing to the ver­nac­u­lar of 12 year old  fan­girls, but felt the dis­claimer was nec­es­sary to save me from hav­ing to explain myself to idiots who can’t tell when I’m being sarcastic.

Here’s what all the fuss is about:

If the trailer is any indi­ca­tion, I believe New Moon is going to suck and suck hard, but it’s really not the filmmaker’s faults.  My lack of enthu­si­asm for the movie can be blamed on author Stephe­nie Meyer’s dread­ful source mate­r­ial.  For your con­ve­nience, and for my own per­sonal amuse­ment, let’s re-cap Meyer’s super-epic plot to the sequel of Twi­light, shall we?

• It’s Bella Swan’s birth­day and her vam­pire friends throw her a party at their digs.
• At the party, Bella gets a paper cut.
• Jasper, one of the newest vam­pires, can’t con­trol him­self when he sees the blood.
• Pre­dictably, he goes into a rage and lunges for Bella.
• Bella’s sexy vam­pire boyfriend Edward Cullen (pause to swoon here) saves the day…
• …But then tells Bella he must leave her for­ever in order to keep her safe, then peaces out.
• Bella can’t han­dle him leav­ing and goes all emo, bor­der­line suicidal.
• That’s okay though, because there’s yet another sexy guy, Jacob Black, just wait­ing around to take Edward’s place.
• And Jacob just hap­pens to be a werewolf.
• Jacob tries to get Bella to “drop that zero and get with the hero” but she ain’t havin’ none, and con­tin­ues to mope around and do reck­less things, like ride motor­cy­cles and go cliff diving.
• At some point Jacob the Were­wolf saves Bella from Lau­rent and Vic­to­ria, two ran­dom vam­pires turned vil­lians, recy­cled from the plot of Twi­light.
• Then out of nowhere, thanks to some weird, poorly-explained mixup cour­tesy of Edward’s sis­ter Alice, who can see the future but fucks it up som­times, Edward thinks Bella com­mit­ted suicide.
• In true Romeo and Juliet fash­ion, Edward decides he can’t live with­out Bella either, and runs off to Italy to kill him­self too.
• But Edward’s a vam­pire, and sui­cide is eas­ier said than done.  Rather than try to explain about the evil Vol­turi and the other bull­shit sec­ondary char­ac­ters that Meyer pulls out of her ass when she needs a plot, Edward’s sui­cide attempt can best be expressed as: DEATH BY SPARKLES.
• Just in the nick of time, Bella saves Edward from expos­ing him­self thus sav­ing him from the Vol­turi and there’s a big dra­matic reunite­ment scene.
• Some other unim­por­tant crap hap­pens in Italy, then Bella, Edward, and the rest of the vam­pires return home.
• Bella wants des­per­ately to become a vam­pire, and so she calls a Super­friends meet­ing where all the vam­pires take turns vot­ing on whether or not it should happen.
• And like the end­ing of Twi­light, Meyer recy­cles the same “does Bella become a vam­pire or not?” cliffhanger in New Moon.
• The end!

It’s mind-blowing stuff, I know.  If you really want, feel free to read my less than glow­ing review of the New Moon book over at Ama­zon.  It’s just all so ridicu­lous, even for a fan­tasy book based on vam­pires.  Most of the book’s 563 pages is spent with Bella, as she pines away for her lost vam­pire love, and let me tell you, it was hell read­ing through page after page of this:

“I was not allowed to think of him. That was some­thing I tried to be very strict about. Of course I slipped; I was only human. But I was get­ting bet­ter, and so the pain was some­thing I could avoid for days at a time now. The trade­off was the never-ending numb­ness. Between pain and noth­ing, I’d cho­sen nothing.”

So by default, New Moon the film should at least be a slight improve­ment over New Moon the book, if only because the nature of the media spares you the lit­er­ary tor­ture.  But Hol­ly­wood isn’t dumb.  It knows there’s good money to be made by cater­ing to the overzeal­ous female fan­base that made the first film such a suc­cess.  Twi­light fans want hot vam­pires, mushy romance, and plenty of Rob Pat­tin­son screen time.  Make no mis­take, New Moon will be one big fan­girl orgy from start to finish.

But why take my word for it when you can read real reviews of the trailer writ­ten by (what I hope are) teenaged girls?

“ok WOW!!! new moon is going to be AH-Mazing, i love kristen’s face when she say ” kiss me” her eye­brow is funny! and the were­wolf, i didnt even expect it to be that big, but OMg i love it!! but tay­lor GOOOOSSH!! i thought he was Hott, now he like fire! but edward was really sad!cant wait! woooo and bella looked eally pretty”

“The part when she got the paper cut and jasper tried to get her but, edward pushed her was so intensed i was like O.O”

“omg omg omg not going to faint but omg. that as freak­ing awsume. may i faint from how hot jacob is. p.s. i think the wolfy looks friendly”

“OMG! This movie looks even bet­ter than Twi­light! It’s dri­ving me crazy cause I wanna see it so bad! Idk if I can wait for Novem­ber 20 to come! Btw: Jacob, so hot!”

Well there you have it.

6 Geeky Things I’m Thankful For

Thanks­giv­ing is just two days away. Come Thurs­day I hope to be in a full-fledged turkey and wine-induced coma, sur­rounded by fam­ily and friends, kick­ing off a bliss­ful four days of gam­ing, couch­ing, Net­flix­ing, and left­overs. Gear­ing up for the long week­end has got me think­ing about all the geeky things I’m thank­ful for.

Here’s a look back at 2008 from a grate­ful geek girl:

The Tales of Bee­dle the Bard

I’m thank­ful for The Tales of Bee­dle the Bard, the new children’s fairy tale book and Harry Pot­ter com­pan­ion piece from one of my favorite authors, J. K. Rowl­ing. Since 1997, I along with most of the world have adven­tured along­side Harry in his seven-year bat­tle against You-Know-Who, and like so many other fans, was depressed when the series came to its heart-wrenching con­clu­sion last sum­mer. Look­ing for­ward to the book’s release this Decem­ber 4th, when I and legions of Pot­ter fans can delve once again into a small piece of the wiz­ard­ing world.

The Dark Knight

I’m thank­ful that The Dark Knight was a piv­otal box office phe­nom­e­non, and arguably one of the best super hero movies ever made. I’m thank­ful that Heath Ledger will be remem­bered for one of the most riv­et­ing and bril­liant per­for­mances ever known to big screen vil­lainy. I’m thank­ful that this movie has defined the new stan­dard against which all future super hero movies should be judged, and I’m opti­mistic that Hol­ly­wood will start pay­ing attention.

The New Xbox Experience

I’m thank­ful for the New Xbox Expe­ri­ence, and Microsoft’s part­ner­ship with Net­flix to bring the “Watch It Now” movie ser­vice to the Xbox 360 con­sole free of charge. Net­flix sub­scribers that own an Xbox 360 no longer have to face the inevitable deci­sion to shell out $100 for a Roku Net­flix player, yet another periph­eral that would clut­ter up our home enter­tain­ment sys­tems. I’ve found the high-quality stream­ing ser­vice to work absolutely per­fectly. It’s just too bad about Sony’s sour grapes.

Wii Fit

I’m thank­ful for Nin­tendo and their seem­ingly end­less inno­va­tion when it comes to pro­duc­ing fun and easy to learn yet chal­leng­ing games for the Wii, most notably 2008’s sim­ple but sur­pris­ingly effec­tive title Wii Fit. While Wii Fit cer­tainly doesn’t score any points for breath­tak­ing graph­ics or intense game­play, there is some­thing to be said for any game (or non-game) that moti­vates us lazy gamers to get off the couch and get physical—and have fun doing it.

The Twi­light Saga

I’m thank­ful for Stephe­nie Meyer’s ridicu­lously cheesy Twi­light Saga, whose sopho­moric books man­aged to com­pletely suck me in for a good two weeks of unadul­ter­ated guilty plea­sure read­ing, the per­fect anti­dote to a stress­ful month . I’m also thank­ful that the equally cheesy and unin­ten­tion­ally hilar­i­ous Twi­light movie—which grossed $70 mil­lion on its open­ing week­end, thanks to dreamy Rob Pat­tin­son—made for one of the most enter­tain­ing and mem­o­rable girls’ night outs I’ve had in a long time.

Wrath of the Lich King

I’m thank­ful for Wrath of the Lich King, the lat­est and great­est expan­sion to the sec­ond life I know as World of War­craft, which gave me the excuse to get back in touch with old guildies and good friends (some vir­tual, some real) and fall in love all over again with the sheer awe­some­ness of this game. Bliz­zard has really out­done them­selves with this release. The stun­ning visu­als and beau­ti­ful music score alone were worth the wait. Indeed, things were get­ting pretty bor­ing around Aze­roth until you showed up, Arthas.

Look­ing for­ward to all the geeky things 2009 will bring!