Buffy vs. Edward Cullen

As a fan of both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight, this has to be the funniest remix I've ever seen! In this brilliantly edited clip by Rebellious Pixels, Edward Cullen shows up at Sunnydale High and tries to put the moves on Buffy Summers, who sees right through his sparkly facade, shutting him down at every opportunity, leading to an epic final battle between Slayer and vampire.

I've been ripping a lot of music from DVD today, taking advantage of an unusually stable computer. I completed two of my favorite Crossroads episodes - Taylor Swift and Def Leppard, and Sara Evans and Maroon 5 - plus the Peter Gabriel's Growing Up Live concert and started on Yes: Live From House of Blues. For those of you who don't know, Crossroads is a show where country music artists pair up with rock or pop bands and do a mash-up of sorts - Robert Plant and Alison Krauss was one of the most well-known and successful pairings. I especially like this song "Love Story" by Taylor Swift which works wonderfully as a duet with Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott. Plus any song channeling Shakespeare can't be all bad, right?

Taylor Swift More CMT Music More CMT Music Videos

New Moon rising

I ended up staying home on Friday instead of going into the city to see Storm & Jonathan's concert at the Sidewalk Cafe. It was raining heavily all day, and I just wasn't feeling up to it.

I finally got around to watching the MTV Movie Awards that I had recorded on my DVR last Sunday, and it was lots of fun - Andy Sandberg was hilarious. Twilight cleaned up, winning Best Movie, Best Female Performance, Best Breakout Male Performance, Best Fight and Best Kiss. Also, they premiered the first trailer for the sequel, New Moon, and it looks fantastic. I'm so looking forward to seeing it in November.

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON trailer in HD

Twilight the movie

I finally went to see Twilight last night with Penny and we had a very nice time, as usual. I’ve been collecting Regal Cinema gift cards at work the past few years because there are no Regal Cinemas in New Jersey where I live, so I have about $60 worth of cards saved up. Agent K gives them out as incentive gifts and for anniversaries, so I was glad to use them.

The movie was good, and extremely faithful to the book. And as a lover of the book, I thought they did a very nice job of capturing almost exactly what the reader would envision when reading the novel. The only issue I have is if I look at the movie as a separate entity, as a person who had not read the book, and if I watched it in that headspace, I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much because there are so many meaningful looks and lines that sound corny out loud if you don't know the depth of emotions and unexplained (in the movie) motivations behind them.

Surprisingly, Penny enjoyed the movie a lot more than she expected to, since she is not a fan of “vampires that glitter” (which underscores somewhat our inverted biological/emotional ages, since she is a lot closer in age to the Young Adult demographic than I am). Her idea of a good book is Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, which she’s currently reading, and we're planning to read Tom Robbins' "Skinny Legs and All" together when she's done with that, a book that Bug got me for my birthday. She thought all the actors who played the paranormals were very sexy though, especially the actor who plays Jacob Black, whom she thought would be a good casting choice for the lead character in the novel she’s writing (she just completed the first 50,000 words during NaNoWriMo last month).

For me, a big part of the fun of watching the movie was hearing how they used the soundtrack, which I’ve been listening to non-stop since it came out a few weeks ago. Hearing Muse’s “Supermassive Black Hole” erupt during the Cullen’s fateful softball game was a blast. In fact, I made my own Twilight-inspired mix on my iPod, since I don’t like every single song on the soundtrack album which incorporates some of Stephenie Meyer’s other picks from the entire series of books and some of my own emo-flavored tracks. My mix goes like this, with non-soundtrack songs marked with an asterisk:

Decode by Paramore
*Stockholm Syndrome by Muse
Spotlight (Twilight Mix) by Mute Math
Leave Out All the Rest by Linkin Park
Go All The Way (In the Twilight) by Perry Farrell
I Caught Myself by Paramore
Eyes on Fire by Blue Foundation
*Starlight by Muse
Flightless Bird, American Mouth by Iron & Wine
*Shadow of the Day by Linkin Park
*The Scientist by Coldplay
*World In My Eyes by Depeche Mode
*In the End by Linkin Park
*Forgiveness by Collective Soul
Decode (Acoustic Version) by Paramore
*I Will Follow You Into The Dark by Death Cab for Cutie
*Creep (Acoustic) by Radiohead
*Brighter by Paramore
*Halo by Porcupine Tree
*Sweet Sacrifice by Evanescence
*Time is Running Out by Muse
*Valentine’s Day by Linkin Park
*My Immortal by Evanescence
*Clocks by Coldplay
*Miracle by Paramore
*Vicarious by Tool
*Assassin by Muse
*Born For This by Paramore
*I Melt With You by Sugarcult
*She Will Be Loved by Maroon 5
*My Heart by Paramore

I’m actually going bowling tonight for the first time in years, the first of two company holiday parties this week. The last time I went bowling was also at a company outing, but with my old firm in Houston. I actually do like to bowl, but it’s hard finding the time and companionship to do so, just like playing tennis and basketball and other things I used to do. So we’ll see how well-coordinated I am after such a long layoff and so many changes over the past few years.

"Decode" video premieres

Lots of Twilight-related stuff, since as some of you know, it's so addictive!

The Wall Street Journal on Friday ran a story on the front page of the Lifestyle section about the evolution of vampires in literature, from Bram Stoker to Stephenie Meyer, going from monster to sensitive alpha male. It's quite interesting.

"Real Men Have Fangs" - Wall Street Journal, Oct. 31, 2008

The video for Paramore's "Decode" from the soundtrack premiered today on MTV.com - nice forest scenery, and some new clips from the upcoming movie.

Paramore - New Music - More Music Videos

Also, here are two TV trailers for the upcoming movie - unlike the book, Bella gets a little frisky in her undies (which one fan comments is wrong because Edward would tear them off with his teeth if things got that far).

Hunger


Check out this video: Event



All for now - back to work.

Twilight music

The track listing for the movie soundtrack to Twilight has been officially announced, as follows:

Muse - "Supermassive Black Hole"
Paramore - "Decode"
The Black Ghosts - "Full Moon"
Linkin Park - "Leave Out All the Rest"
MuteMath - "Spotlight" ("Twilight" mix)
Perry Farrell - "Go All the Way (Into the Twilight)"
Collective Soul - "Tremble for My Beloved"
Paramore - "I Caught Myself "
Blue Foundation - "Eyes on Fire"
Rob Pattinson - "Never Think"
Iron & Wine - "Flightless Bird, American Mouth"
Carter Burwell - "Bella's Lullaby"

I've read in other sources that Muse will re-mix the first track for this release, which is cool because this song is actually my #1 Most Played Song on my iPod right now (in fact the top 3 are all Muse songs, probably fueled in part by Twilight fever).

Also, I've totally in love with the first track by Paramore, another emo band with a 18-year-old lead singer named Hayley Williams who has a really big voice. You can check out the new song, Decode, on their MySpace page or on Stephenie Meyer's Web site, where the song debuted last week. While you're there, you can see the new movie poster for Twilight (which I don't like as much as the first one, but oh well). I might go out at lunchtime and see if I can pick up Paramore's first album, All We Know Is Falling from the bookstore.

The Linkin Park song is already one of my favorites from the Minutes to Midnight album I checked out from the library. And I think we can all agree that Collective Soul is a pretty cool band, even if you've been rolling your eyes at everything else in this post. Hey, at least I know I listen to cotton candy!