New Moon: A review

I think it's natural for anyone from my generation to be cynical towards any recently popular book-based movie franchise. Everyone knows that the Harry Potter books are way better than the movies, so we just love to brush aside a new one that claims to be a "phenomenon". Especially one about romance with vampires. Especially one that attracts middle school fangirls. Despite all of this, we will still read the books (if to just find out what happens in the end) or watch the movie (if to just make ourselves feel better by making fun of it).

When my roommate Anita asked me if I wanted to see New Moon this evening at the HUB, she was joking. I, on the other hand, decided it wasn't a half bad idea considering I did read the books and did watch the first movie and unfortunately didn't have anything better to do on a Friday night. We decided to go, like I said, to mock it and tell all our friends how terrible it was. Judging from all the snickers we heard in the movie theater after just the five minutes of the movie, it was clear that everyone else had come for the same purpose.

About two hours later when the credits rolled, there was a general air of "wow, that was kind of retarded" as people got up to leave. No, it was not a particularly enjoyable movie. It was agonizingly slow. There were times when I closed my eyes for 5-10 seconds and when I reopened them, nothing had changed. The most exciting parts were actually meeting new cast members, such as the werewolves and the Volturi. But between Taylor Lautner's torso, Kristen Stewart's "the world hates me" face and Robert Pattinson's gruesome facial expressions, where was the story?

And then it hit me...New Moon has no story. It wasn't the director's fault. I could tell you the entire story in one paragraph, though I won't since I don't feel like yelling "Spoiler Alert!". And that's why I think that while New Moon was not a quality film, it's a laudable effort. There's skill involved in even making a two hour movie on Stephenie Meyer's plot. No, I would not watch it again. But to make up for the lack of substance, it's richly detailed. It tries to be artistic and meaningful, and begs to be taken seriously. It's as if the filmmakers are like, "Sorry about the lame ass story. It's not our fault. But enjoy the scenery." Also, it's a pretty good adaptation of the book--faithful to the details. So I guess my point is, if you want to avoid reading New Moon (something I highly recommend), watching this movie is an acceptable alternative.

From me, the movie gets a 51%. I'm sure many of you would rate it lower, and I know I'm not supposed to be sympathizing with directors anything, but just consider the material they had to work with. Whether you want to watch it just to laugh at it or watch it just to get it over with, I think you should watch it.

And then tell me what you think by commenting below...:)

Gobs of fun

If any of you remember me in middle school, my friends and I went through a phase of Lord of the Rings obsession. One year, my new year's resolution was to learn Elvish (I'm not kidding even one bit). Interestingly enough, in my linguistics class, we had an assignment that involved researching an artificial language and proving whether or not it is a real language. I chose Sindarin, which is actually one of the many Elvish languages invented by JRR Tolkien and wrote a paper on it! I will share my findings with all of you after I find out if I did okay on it.


I had a rather wonderful weekend (minus the frantic cramming on Sunday night). I didn't go to any classes this Thursday because I didn't feel like it. I did however attend my Anatomy Lab Exam at 9 PM. The Anatomy Lab Exam is where we have to go around to different stations identifying different bones in the body. We get 45 seconds at each station, which is more than enough time to identify and write down your answer if you actually know the bone that is sitting in front of you. However if you don't, it is a very stressful 45 seconds and usually ends in you frantically sketching a lousy picture of it so that you can try to identify it later (never works that way).

Anyway, on Friday was Bhangra Resurrection! We had to go, despite the foot of snow. We only spent an hour there, but it was a very energetic hour involving Bhangra dancing, stepping on peoples toes, doubling over in wheezing fits (I am that out of shape). This year, I thought I should pay for any damage that I have caused so I even bought a bright yellow Bhangra Resurrection T shirt. It was gobs of fun, but we had to leave early to surprise Swetha at midnight for her birthday.

And on Saturday was Dandia On Fire! DOF is a Raas competition where several awesome teams come to perform at Eisenhower (we had it last year too). They were awesome to watch. And after DOF, Sampath, Moksha, and I watched Jalsa on a big screen by hijacking a room in Boucke Building, opening the podium lock, (using a combination which we had acquired just earlier that day :D) and playing a downloaded rip of the movie. We also brought popcorn and smoothies into the room even though it said "food and drinks not allowed". We are such bad people.

Sunday was not terribly exciting since I tried to start doing homework at 10 AM (I actually started at 6 PM). After that, it was kind of stressful.


It is now Tuesday, and I've got a test to study for tomorrow, so I'll stop writing. However, there are exciting things in my future: For my Graphic Design class, I have to take these abstract artsy pictures of "microscale natural phenoma", stuff like smoke, dew drops, snowflakes, fire, and stuff like that. I really liked some of the artwork I saw with smoke, so I picked that for my project. Unfortunately, most buildings are equipped with smoke detectors so I can't really create smoke without causing great anguish from my dormmates. Therefore, I am going to get myself one of those electronic cigarettes. Don't worry, I won't be smoking it there is no nicotine in it anyway...it is just going to produce water vapor which photographs a lot like smoke. So my ECig should get here sometime this week and I'm very excited to use it. I'll take pictures of that too.