The year that was

2008 brought some interesting life changes for me as I moved back to Vancouver after living in Toronto for four years. I am glad to be back home with friends and family again but I do miss my friends back in TO.

Aside from still being astounded in watching my niece able to grow up, 2008 brought some great adventures. I traversed the Maritimes in May and realized a childhood dream of going to Prince Edward Island to see the land where Anne of Green Gables came from and seeing things like Green Gables and Dalvay-by-the-Sea (aka The White Sands Hotel) with my own eyes.

While work travel didn’t take me places like Shanghai this year, I did get to go to Los Angeles for the first time and realize another dream: seeing the taping of The Price is Right!!! You can catch my show on January 8, 2009.

This year I also volunteered for the Vancouver International Film Festival. While not quite like volunteering for the Toronto International Film Festival, it was still an awesome experience and I got to see 11 movies out of it. My personal favourites were: I've Loved You So Long, I am Good, Rachel Getting Married and Summer House (despite that last 10 minutes).

Speaking of movies. I didn't see many first run movies in theatres this year. Now that I live near a second run movie house, have seen some double headers. But I digress.

The biggest disappointment in 2008 was the fact that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince movie was moved from November 21 2008 to July 17, 2009. I was so looking forward to that movie last year but now I have to wait another year to see it. The trailers make the movie look awesome.

Among the highlights of movies I did see include WALL-E, Prince Caspian, Get Smart and Mamma Mia. This list actually sums up all the movies I did see in theatres this year.

I am saving the Twilight movie for last. It was a movie that I had no desire to see in 2008. It was the movie that took over my beloved Harry Potter spot. But that was before I read any of the books. As mentioned in a previous blog, I only read the book to see what the big deal was and the big deal was the epic love story between a teenage girl and an impossibly handsome vampire. After reading all four books, I really wanted to see the movie. My review is posted but the movie still lingers with me especially when I listen to Carter Burwell's Bella's Lullaby. It takes me that that scene in the movie and I remember Kristen Stewart's and Robert Pattinson's chemistry.

I would say Twilight was a surprise for my in 2008. I didn't expect to love it.
2008 was also a great year for me reading wise. I've read like about seven books in the last two months. I haven't read that many books released this year but the highlight was Tales of Beedle the Bard by JK Rowling. At least 2008 gave me something Harry Potter related.

Also let's take a moment to mourn the cancellation of shows that I loved in 2008: Pushing Daisies and Eli Stone. TV this year was a bit of a disappointment too as I am not interested in any of the new shows that were introduced for the 2008-09 TV season.

Things to look forward to 2009 movie wise. Well I am currently reading The Time Traveler's Wife and I am looking forward to seeing that movie as the book so far is very intriguing.

I am also eagerly anticipating The Lovely Bones, the movie based on the book by Alice Sebold. The book was amazing and I cried during some parts of it. The cast of the film is good too (Rachel Weisz and Mark Walberg) so I am hoping the film will be faithful to the story.

Of course I am looking forward to July 17, 2009 for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and November 20, 2009 for New Moon (the second film in the Twilight Saga –although the book sucks). They are filming New Moon in Vancouver in March so maybe I will get to see Robert Pattinson milling about Vancouver.

Happy New Year and see you in 2009.

Twilight vs. Harry Potter: Which one do I love and why?

If I had to choose between these two book series, easily I would have hands down have said the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling. How could I not chose this, after all it is my literary love. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's (Sorcerer's) Stone was the book that started my love of reading.

As my brothers could attest, I never liked reading. Even I am surprised that I survived high school. I think with a couple of exceptions (like Hiroshima and A Farewell to Arms (which by the way, I really had to slog through that to even finish)) I don't think I ever read a novel all the way through. I mostly relied on the movie version to get through tests. As an aside, I remember when I used to work at a video store, I would always laugh as I saw high schoolers come in to rent Hamlet, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights as I knew that they were only watching those because that is what they were studying at the time.

But back to the issue at hand, as soon as I read the first Harry Potter book, I became hooked on his tale. At first, I didn’t want to read Harry Potter because I thought they were children's books but there was so much hype about it that I was curious but didn't want to fall for the hype. However, I joined an online book club and they recommended the first Harry Potter. After all, this same book club recommended The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery and I really loved that book. So I gave them the benefit of the doubt and walked into a book store to buy Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

I couldn't put the book down. What surprised me the most was that it didn't read as a children's novel. Adults could totally get into it and I loved the fact that it wasn’t predictable as most kids books are. You think one person is the villain throughout but then Rowling puts in a twist you don't see coming.

This became the same thing through books 2 to 7. And as the books grew in size and became darker, it was evident that Harry Potter could be enjoyed by all ages. I love the suspense that Rowling created as the series progressed. I wanted to know the outcome of the saga. I read Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows (the last book in series) in 24 hours. The fastest I have read any book. I wanted to read it fast so I wouldn't be spoiled by people talking about in the streets or the Internet. I needed to know how it all ended. I was on tenderhooks and worried throughout. It didn’t help that Rowling said that at least two characters would die and I didn't put it past her that one of the two could have been one of the trio of Harry, Ron and Hermione.

Reading Harry Potter lead me to read more and more. Since May 2008, I've read almost 10 books. I think the most I've ever read in one year.

Four of those books where the Twilight Saga. And if it wasn't for Harry Potter, I would have never read Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga. I was so biased for Harry Potter that when I saw a local bookshop having a midnight release party for Breaking Dawn the last in the Twilight series, I wanted to see if it was to the grand scale as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows midnight release party. This is the same bookshop that held that party at Van Dusen Gardens and not at the store. I went to a midnight release party in Toronto for HP7 and it was an awesome experience. Anyways, I went there at around 11:45pm and saw that the line-up wasn't large and I laughed and knew there would be no line-ups that stretched a good portion of West Broadway and knew that Harry Potter would always be more popular than Twilight, which still holds true today.

This was all before I even read the Twilight Saga. As with Harry Potter, I was curious to see why teenage girls and their moms loved this story about the love story between a human teenager and a vampire. And since the movie was coming out soon (taking over Harry Potter and the Half –Blood Prince's old release spot) I decided to borrow the book from the library.

And I do have a literary policy. I seem to read books knowing that a movie version is coming. I did that with Atonement, Howard's End, Remains of the Day, The Lovely Bones, etc…

So I read the first book in the Twilight Saga and as I was reading it, I did get a sense of why people love it. The reason why I didn't want to read it at first was because a) it was for teenage girls and I haven't been a teenager in a long time and b) it was a horror story and I don't do horror.

But how wrong I was, the elements of horror weren't scary at all and the appeal of it is the love story. And I am a romantic and I really love a great love story especially the one that Meyer depicted in Twilight.

Twilight does remind me a lot about Jane Eyre (my classic literary love) and I read that one of the influence's of Twilight is Jane Eyre and I can see that. Bella sees herself as ordinary while Jane calls hers "small, obscure, plain and little." The Edwards that they love are handsome, beautiful and rich. Both women don't think that their Edwards could ever love them in return as they love them. The Edwards on the other hand see themselves as monsters, damaged good, unworthy of Bella's and Jane's love.

If you ever read the first 12 chapters of Midnight Sun, the retelling of Twilight from Edward Cullen's perspective, you see that Bella and Edward were totally in synch with each other in terms of their feelings. Both pretty much fell in love with each other at the same time, felt the same insecurities until they were finally able to profess their love in the meadow. It actually melts my heart as I write this.

I also thought it was romantic that it was the first love for both and considering that Edward is a 108 year old vampire, it is quite sweet. And I love that sometimes the first love you feel for that person is the ONE.

While Harry Potter has elements of romance in it, it wasn't the overriding dominant theme. After all, it was all about defeating Voldemort. But I loved that Rowling brought together Harry and Ginny and Ron and Hermione and I really loved the epilogue as we got to see a happy ending happen to these couples. I was less thrilled that she killed off my other favourite couple in the series: Tonks and Lupin. No good Rowling, not good at all.

But those romances don't hold a candle to the intense love that Bella and Edward feel for each other and as you continue reading the other books in the series New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn you can feel their love grow (just ignore the Jacob parts) and you get to see them live and be a couple. Another influence of Meyer was the Anne of Green Gables series because you get to see Anne and Gilbert's life after getting married. Breaking Dawn, while ridiculous in places, really showed what I wanted to see in the Saga: Bella and Edward after they got married. To me, it seemed that their love story got more complete and even hotter. However, unlike HP7, I wasn't on tenderhooks because I somehow knew there would be a happy ending while the ending to Deathly Hallows was mixed with joy and sadness. It was a more of a bittersweet ending.

So I can I chose which I love better? I think I can and that would be Harry Potter. As I said, if there was no Harry Potter, there would be no Twilight. I remember after HP7, I was telling a friend while we debriefed over HP7 that I would never read again. Harry Potter got me into reading and didn't see any books that interested me but she said I should give Twilight a try, A year and half later, I am glad that the old adage of never say never is true.

What do I read next? I don't know. I am waiting for Midnight Sun to actually get published and then after that, who knows.

Twilight movie review

Twilight doesn't quite shine

By Vanessa Ho

Don’t get me wrong, I really wanted to love Catherine Hardwicke's adaption of Stephenie Meyer's widely popular vampire romance Twilight. After all I fell in love with the books that depict the epic love story between ordinary high schooler Bella Swan (played how I imagined her to be by Kristen Stewart) and an impossibly beautiful vampire named Edward Cullen (the perfectly cast Robert Pattinson aka Cedric Diggory from Harry Potter).

But alas, I didn’t. Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg has been very faithful to Meyer's first book in the Twilight saga and even cribbed a lot of the dialogue from the novel but certain scenes just didn't translate well to the screen as they did on the page. For instance, the first moment that Edward sees Bella in biology, he is repulsed by her smell because he is overwhelmingly attracted to her human scent but the scene just comes off as unintentionally funny they way Pattinson held his mouth and nose as if he is about to throw up.

But I am getting ahead of myself, Twilight starts with Bella moving away from sunny Phoenix to

dreary Forks, Washington to live with her father (Billy Burke) after her mother (Sarah Clarke) remarries and wants to travel with her new husband as he tries to make it as a professional baseball player. Soon after starting at the new school, she attracts the unwanted attention of many of the boys at the school but she is immediately intrigued by Edward and his family. At this point, she doesn’t suspect them to be vampires. Edward constantly avoids her and I guess that makes him more attractive to her. Eventually, she figures out who he is, thanks to some help from childhood friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) and confronts him with her theories, which he confirms by showing her various things.

Edward takes Bella to meet his vampire family and explains that they aren't like other vampires. The only hunt animals. However, Bella's life becomes endangered after another vampire called James (Cam Gigandet) smells Bella and wants her blood, thus setting up a battle to save her life or doom her to become a vampire.

The most important aspect to me of any adaptation of Twilight is chemistry. Do Pattinson and Stewart have chemistry? From the trailers and photos I've seen, I inferred that they did and when I finally saw the movie, I agree. It was a very slow burn chemistry (much like how the characters in the book slowly fall in love) and culminated to a very hot kiss in Bella's bedroom.

Stewart has to carry the whole film as Bella is the central character and she does a great job but at times, especially near the end after the climactic battle, she was a bit over the top in her line delivery.

And you can tell that this film was made for only $40 million. The special effects weren't great, especially during a pivotal scene between Edward and Bella that I won't spoil to those that haven’t read the books. Here's hoping that New Moon, the next film in the Twilight Saga will have a bigger budget and better special effects.

But at the heart of this film is the love story between Bella and Edward and after being away from the film for a few hours, that is really all I can think about and what I think about after I've read the novels so in that sense, the film succeeded in my expectations of capturing their love. After all, I am quite the romantic.