Before going to PA for Thanksgiving Eve, Sara, Amy (oh and Sara’s friend Karin) went to see “Twilight” the movie. It was what it was – definitely much better than my expectations. I just watched it again this weekend with my mom and I liked it even better the second time around. I think it helped to have moved beyond not accepting that the casting didn’t live up to my mind’s eye of the book characters. I really liked the style of the filming and the color palette. They definitely weren’t going for a Disney-like full color quality. Of course they adjusted the plot points a bit but overall they stayed surprisingly close to the book. Robert Pattinson, as Edward, was in fact pretty yummy but we caught a couple minutes of of him as Cedric in “The Goblet of Fire” on tv last night and he looks much better w/out white face paint and lipstick. Too bad he dies in that one.
The baseball scene turned out really cool and the end credits really rocked. Those were my favorite parts. Sadly none of it was actually filmed in Forks or PA. Which was a bummer. Forks the movie town was a cute little borough, definitely wet, but still cute which isn’t the real Forks, and the high school was this classic multi-story number you’d see, well I don’t know where you’d see it but not in Forks. My mom even started laughing at that first shot of the school (and so did Amy and I the first time around). The brief scene in PA wasn’t at all like PA either.
Our PA (the REAL place) Thanksgiving was great as usual. 17 people counting Mr. Jonah-cakes who enjoyed his cauliflower and cheerios.
Bella Italia: The sign lets you know about Bella & Edward
On Saturday Slanky and I ditched the kid and went out to dinner and a movie. We decided to try Bella Italia because we’ve never been there. You “Twilight” fans will note its reference in the book. We told ourselves we definitely weren’t going there because of the book but I think we were a little curious as to how much they’d play it up. The Peninsula in general has benefited a lot from the Meyer-mania. You can read about that here. My mom told us that there were some block-wide celebrations happening at all the businesses down town next to the theater showing “Twilight” when it first opened and we saw this display at a clothing store a couple storefronts down from Bella Italia.
Vampire-like clothes? Not sure. The apples in the display are a nice touch.
Apple in display
Dinner at Bella Italia far exceeded our expectations (Is this starting to sound familiar? I think at this point I should just stop having expectations because I’ve been wrong so many times lately!). We started with a calamari appi (sautéed with olives, artichokes, tomatoes & roasted garlic on polenta) and it was perfect. The sauce was good, calamari was fresh and cooked well, the artichokes worked surprisingly well and the olives and garlic didn’t overpower anything. We wiped down the plate with our leftover bread. It was that good. We also shared a small Caesar salad and the croutons were house-made – crunchy on the outside with a little bit of buttery chewiness on the inside, totally good. Slanky had a mushroom ravioli (which I pointed out to him, was what “Bella” had, he didn’t remember) and I had a smoked salmon fettuccini. I think Slanky enjoyed his and mine was great too. I’ve had better versions of this dish in the past (my personal preference is with no tomatoes but this version had them) but this was nothing to complain about. The salmon was locally smoked and delicious and they did not skimp on it. The dish was so big that I took half of it home. We had a good white wine but I can’t remember what that was. Later we headed to the movie. We saw “Quantum of Solace” which sucked. I could say more about that but I won’t. In hindsight I should have forced Slanky to see “Twilight” instead.
hey jody, thanks for posting about this!!! it never even occurred to me that PA and forks might be jumping on the Twilight bandwagon. interesting. but makes sense. wish i could have gone to see the movie with you all!
so you haven’t heard of the twilight tours? or the businesses that have popped up specifically geared to twilighters in forks? i heard this one story about a woman who uprooted her family (5 kids and husband) so she could open some kind of twilight specialty shop in forks. good for the economy of the town tho if it helps bring in some moeny!
seriously? twilight tours? NO! have definitely not heard of them before now. blame it on living under the rock that is emily’s world. combine living overseas with have three small children including a newborn, and i the only news i get is the most basic of headlines. how i miss listening to NPR all morning!
Seriously there is a gal at my work who has a friend who goes to forks on bella’s birthday every year. It must have rubbed off on my cowork who is out today b/c she’s spending the w/e in forks. This is insane.
wow, seriously? well good for forks i guess.. since it’s gross here weather-wise right now i can’t even imagine what it’s like in forks.
don’t worry emily! for the most part you aren’t missing a whole hell of a lot. but yes, the meyer-mania has definitely hit the peninsula. which is good because economically things haven’t been too great there for the past couple of years..
Poor forks probably cold use all the help it can get.
Emily and I watched this via iTunes last night. Actually, I watched all of it and Emily watched about half of it before walking out saying how “totally boring” it was.
I would give it a C+. There were a few parts of the movie that I didn’t think were in the book, so now I am going to reread the book to see if I’m correct.
Dahlia j indicated it was better the second time, so I might watch it while the kids (and Emily) are sleeping.
hmm, boring is not a word i’d use to describe it! i thought it was well done for what it was and captured the melodramatic, cheesy teen-goth romance feel. the baseball scene? cool filming and cool color palette. the end credits? awesome.
I couldn’t sit through it again so soon, but I am interested in seeing the other movies.
I agree about the baseball scene.
That’s just it – the other movies will probably be horrible because they aren’t being directed by the same person. She refused to fast-track the next one so she was fired. it’s all about the $$.