Twilight

I may not be able to understand most of the pop culture here in Mexico, but I do have internet and cable tv coming to me directly from Atlanta and San Fran (East and West Coast programming..yeh!) so I am at least a little up to date on the world of pop culture in the US. 

Yes. Pop Culture. I am 30 years old and I am still into this stuff ok? 

Anyway, I have been seeing the commercials for the book-turned-movie Twilight. Have you read this book (or the following 3 books in the series)? If not, get up off your couch, drive yourself to your favorite bookseller and pick up a copy. Then spend the next day ignoring your children, husband and household responsibilites while you read it because if you are like me, you won't want to put it down. The book is categorized in Young Adult fiction, but don't let that fool you. It is still a great read for any age. And it's about vampires. Yes, a  90 year old vampire (stuck at age 17 cause you know vampires don't age once they are turned into vampires) that falls in love with a 17 year old mortal girl and the love story that plays out over the next 500 or so pages. 

I promise it really is good no matter how cheesy I just made it sound.

Anyway, the movie is coming out in a couple weeks and even though I loved, loved, loved the book, I am not sure if I really want to see the movie or not. I have read many books that have been turned into movies and most of them really didn't do it for me. Not to say that if I had seen the movies without reading the books I wouldn't have enjoyed the movies. It's just that the books are always so much better.* I've heard that the Twilight movie follows the book pretty closely so that is good news, but I'm just apprehensive to pay to see the characters I liked so well in my imagination come to life possibly in a different way than I imagined. It's like saying my version was wrong or something.  Already just from the snippets on the commercials I've seen I'm not sure the main character, Bella, was cast right. She seems way too serious.

From what I understand there is a kind of cult following for the Twilight books sort of like the Harry Potter series. Now I've never read or seen any of the Harry Potter books or films, so I can't compare, but I do know those books/movies were pretty popular. And I'm assuming most of the people going to see the movies are the fans of the books, so were the movies a fair representation of the books and the characters?

Needless to say there will probably be hundreds of people lined up to get tickets to the Twilight movie as soon as it is released. Me? I don't even think it's showing here in Mexico until at least a week after the US release and then I would have to find it in English (with Spanish subtitles). I think I would like to see it though, just for comparisons sake since I really, really, really liked the book(s). Oh yeah and the guy that plays the role of Edward is kind of hot - in a vampirish kind of way. :)

*the only exception I can think of that I liked the movie better than the book it was based on is The Notebook.