This originally was part of my response to Domynoe on the last post - then I realized it was getting long and involved, so I moved the bulk of it here.

I'm totally crushing right now on the Twilight saga. Books, movie, actors, the whole nine.

Not that the books or the movie is perfect, because they're not. But like I've mentioned in the past, I give great audience. I laugh, I cry, I gasp and I applaud in all the right places. I forgive a lot. And I nitpick after the lights come up and we're in the car on the way home.

For me, the awkward, painful places in the movie that I notice tend to be typical teenage awkward, painful places. Yes, there are some wooden line reading choices I'd have definitely directed differently, a couple awkward movement choices they really should have cut, but over all IMO they did a good job taking that book and turning it into a good movie that totally reached it's target audience. Which as I understand it, is the pre-teen to teenaged girl.

Other things...I didn't like the ILM sparkle on Edward at all. It looked - wrong - golden. Wrong. Rob Pattinson needed to shave closer (and shave his chest). Carlisle's face makeup was too whitely obvious. Bella wasn't cold when Edward kissed her - and much is made of his marble lips in the book. I mean, I can nitpick with the best of them, having been both in ballet and theatre, an actor and a director.

But for me, personally, bottom line, I am enthralled with it and it's got me a little buggy. I'm rereading parts of all the books that I want to sink into my brain. I'm watching the movie daily (and on Wednesday, I saw it twice).

The weird thing is, I know that's not my writing style, I know I'm not going to write the next huge first love-impossible love romeo&juliet book/movie to come down the pike. But there is a part of me that wishes I could.

In other news, despite my unseemly love affair with all things Twilight, I'm writing more than I have and the writing is better. I'm writing my two novels, doing background research for a play, and started a screenplay for ScriptFrenzy on Tuesday that is funny and dark and my husband actually likes. If studying this world of stephenie meyer is helping my writing, well then I'm good with that.

I am not out to convert anyone to the Twilight brigade. I don't want to talk to anyone about the books or the movie, discuss casting or costumes or any of that. Rather, I just needed to express my astonishment that I have been so caught up by this, at such a late date so to speak. I only got the other two books last week.

I guess I thought I was beyond falling so hard, so fast. Too old to do so. That I find I'm not is something else to think about.

Splat.