darling understand that everything ends
1. My God, the New Moon soundtrack is freaking fantastic. It's kind of surprising that they convinced artists like Death Cab For Cutie, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Grizzly Bear, Bon Iver, and Thom Yorke to do original songs for it, but HELL YEAH. A lot of these bands somehow seem just perfect for the tone of the book that's so different from Twilight. And it's kind of interesting that there's hardly any female vocalists on this one. :/ Nothing says "Jacob Black" like a song with some melancholy howling harmonica by a band with the word "motorcycle" in their name, haha...
The one track from the score by Alexandre Desplat I wasn't notably impressed with, though. I've been listening to some of Carter Burwell's score for Twilight and had forgotten how pretty it is. The cinematography in the first movie along with his music gave it a superficial but nonetheless captivating beauty, and I've been hoping Desplat will be able to do something for NM that is somehow cohesive with what Burwell was doing while still utilizing his own strengths. Since before the second movie was even underway, I've actually had a track from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button on my playlist of stuff I find fitting to listen to while writing Twilight fic, and I was excited to find out Desplat is doing this score. I just hope he'll pull out something more than a bunch of his typical piano themes like this track, because I'm kind of bored with him always doing the same thing by now.
2. And on that subject, no, I still haven't come to my senses and gotten over these books. LOL. Or this book in particular at least. I find I'm still very defensive of New Moon as the only one in the series that actually reaches a very poignant level of writing and shows some honest-to-God talent of Stephenie Meyer's that she was never able to access again when it really counted (though I've heard she did hit a lot of the right notes again while writing The Host).
It really leads me to think that the entire shallow premise of the series might be kind of below her more intelligent writing instincts, because there's probably just no way to write a story about a vampire and human living happily ever after just because in a way that is honest and resonant rather than just cheaply satisfying, but still there are parts in the series where it seems kind of conflicted about what kind of story it's actually supposed to be. The simple but deep friendship between Bella and Jacob that is the focus during a good half of New Moon feels ten times more romantic to me than her relationship with Edward despite how comparatively normal and unremarkable it is. Meyer doesn't make it a secret that she started writing these books as her own personal escapism, and it's too bad considering what she could possibly accomplish with any ambition to actually write about life. Which, by the way, you can do even in books about vampires and werewolves. Sigh.
Yeah, I know, let's beat the dead horse some more. But hey, it turns out SCOTTY WOULD AGREE WITH ME:
3. My mom is actually asking me to make something for her to serve at a reception after some recital she has tomorrow or something because she doesn't have any time to do it, LOL. So I guess I'll have my evening filled up today making some of these chocolate cream cheese ball things I like to do around Christmas. I need to come up with something better to call them.
4. I found my wig! Under a big pile of Layla's crap in our room. Good. Now I'm crossing my fingers that when my costume gets here it'll actually fit, because it was listed as "small" but then I read part of the description that claims it fits "size 4-10" so I'm like What the actual fuck and hoping I didn't get gypped into buying a one-size-really-doesn't-fit-all.
5. Sometimes it's really funny to me when writers/companies/networks show they're really in touch with the fanbases of their works. For example, when I hear the writers of Avatar: The Last Airbender not only talking in some episode commentaries about their awareness of the prevalence of Zuko/Katara shippers but even knowing to refer to them as "Zutarians" like they call themselves.
And as I've been poking around the official Skins website which has all kinds of awesome extra goodies like blogs and video diaries by the characters, I've been pretty amused to see their news blog say "Enter the Naomily vid contest." They're actually having an official contest for Naomi/Emily fanvids because they've found how popular videos like these are in fandom. The grand prize is a day of paid work in the Series 4 editing room getting to learn how they put episodes together. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not sure that all the kinds of people who make videos to music as their fannish hobby, even the ones who have an exceptionally good feel for it, are necessarily interested in the editing profession. It seems like lots of people may end up entering more because they're excited just by the idea of seeing some of the fourth season before any other fans. Maybe they're not that in touch with fans, heh.
6. I need to retract something I said to Shep the other night about how True Blood is just as bad as Twilight. Though I did admit he had a point when he argued at least TB doesn't take itself too seriously. Right after we had this conversation while I was at his house with Layla and Kitty we ended up watching some for the lulz. Then I came home and started going on to watching the next episodes for more lulz. And you know what, it actually gets quite good, in ways I never could have expected from something that starts out really entertaining but hard to take seriously. It's this weird and remarkable blend of campy, brilliant, awesomely trashy, and anti-pretentiously allegorical. There are both hilarious and sad moments dealing with hatred of vampires, racism, homophobia, or any combination out of the three at once. ("Mama, he's so white." "No, honey, we're white. He's dead.")
Bill Compton is not nearly as boring or as badly acted a character as I initially thought, though the actor who plays him is still obviously a moron. Anna Paquin just seems like one of those actors who can be very good but only when doing an isolated variety of things. She somehow showed the most potential when she was a child actor, just like I've always said about Kirsten Dunst. LOL. Watching this show only makes me more indecisive about whether I like her (now) or not.
Click to viewThe one track from the score by Alexandre Desplat I wasn't notably impressed with, though. I've been listening to some of Carter Burwell's score for Twilight and had forgotten how pretty it is. The cinematography in the first movie along with his music gave it a superficial but nonetheless captivating beauty, and I've been hoping Desplat will be able to do something for NM that is somehow cohesive with what Burwell was doing while still utilizing his own strengths. Since before the second movie was even underway, I've actually had a track from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button on my playlist of stuff I find fitting to listen to while writing Twilight fic, and I was excited to find out Desplat is doing this score. I just hope he'll pull out something more than a bunch of his typical piano themes like this track, because I'm kind of bored with him always doing the same thing by now.
2. And on that subject, no, I still haven't come to my senses and gotten over these books. LOL. Or this book in particular at least. I find I'm still very defensive of New Moon as the only one in the series that actually reaches a very poignant level of writing and shows some honest-to-God talent of Stephenie Meyer's that she was never able to access again when it really counted (though I've heard she did hit a lot of the right notes again while writing The Host).
It really leads me to think that the entire shallow premise of the series might be kind of below her more intelligent writing instincts, because there's probably just no way to write a story about a vampire and human living happily ever after just because in a way that is honest and resonant rather than just cheaply satisfying, but still there are parts in the series where it seems kind of conflicted about what kind of story it's actually supposed to be. The simple but deep friendship between Bella and Jacob that is the focus during a good half of New Moon feels ten times more romantic to me than her relationship with Edward despite how comparatively normal and unremarkable it is. Meyer doesn't make it a secret that she started writing these books as her own personal escapism, and it's too bad considering what she could possibly accomplish with any ambition to actually write about life. Which, by the way, you can do even in books about vampires and werewolves. Sigh.
Yeah, I know, let's beat the dead horse some more. But hey, it turns out SCOTTY WOULD AGREE WITH ME:
3. My mom is actually asking me to make something for her to serve at a reception after some recital she has tomorrow or something because she doesn't have any time to do it, LOL. So I guess I'll have my evening filled up today making some of these chocolate cream cheese ball things I like to do around Christmas. I need to come up with something better to call them.
4. I found my wig! Under a big pile of Layla's crap in our room. Good. Now I'm crossing my fingers that when my costume gets here it'll actually fit, because it was listed as "small" but then I read part of the description that claims it fits "size 4-10" so I'm like What the actual fuck and hoping I didn't get gypped into buying a one-size-really-doesn't-fit-all.
5. Sometimes it's really funny to me when writers/companies/networks show they're really in touch with the fanbases of their works. For example, when I hear the writers of Avatar: The Last Airbender not only talking in some episode commentaries about their awareness of the prevalence of Zuko/Katara shippers but even knowing to refer to them as "Zutarians" like they call themselves.
And as I've been poking around the official Skins website which has all kinds of awesome extra goodies like blogs and video diaries by the characters, I've been pretty amused to see their news blog say "Enter the Naomily vid contest." They're actually having an official contest for Naomi/Emily fanvids because they've found how popular videos like these are in fandom. The grand prize is a day of paid work in the Series 4 editing room getting to learn how they put episodes together. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not sure that all the kinds of people who make videos to music as their fannish hobby, even the ones who have an exceptionally good feel for it, are necessarily interested in the editing profession. It seems like lots of people may end up entering more because they're excited just by the idea of seeing some of the fourth season before any other fans. Maybe they're not that in touch with fans, heh.
6. I need to retract something I said to Shep the other night about how True Blood is just as bad as Twilight. Though I did admit he had a point when he argued at least TB doesn't take itself too seriously. Right after we had this conversation while I was at his house with Layla and Kitty we ended up watching some for the lulz. Then I came home and started going on to watching the next episodes for more lulz. And you know what, it actually gets quite good, in ways I never could have expected from something that starts out really entertaining but hard to take seriously. It's this weird and remarkable blend of campy, brilliant, awesomely trashy, and anti-pretentiously allegorical. There are both hilarious and sad moments dealing with hatred of vampires, racism, homophobia, or any combination out of the three at once. ("Mama, he's so white." "No, honey, we're white. He's dead.")
Bill Compton is not nearly as boring or as badly acted a character as I initially thought, though the actor who plays him is still obviously a moron. Anna Paquin just seems like one of those actors who can be very good but only when doing an isolated variety of things. She somehow showed the most potential when she was a child actor, just like I've always said about Kirsten Dunst. LOL. Watching this show only makes me more indecisive about whether I like her (now) or not.