New Moon is the second story in the Twilight Saga. For those of you that may not have read the books yet, the basic premise in New Moon is Bella doesn’t want to grow old, Edward is scared of hurting Bella, Edward leaves Bella (but comes to her when she’s doing something dangerous), Jacob steps in to romance Bella, in the meantime becomes a werewolf, and Bella rushes to Italy to save Edward.

There’s a bit more to the story than that, but that’s basic premise. I was able to see the movie during a matinee on Wednesday. The theater was completely full, but there wasn’t a single tween in sight. No, this was the moms time to gawk at the hot young boys in the movie.

I am a big fan of Twilight. I have read all the books. The books are basically uneducated fan fiction that I could have written in high school, but I appreciate them for what they are. A guilty pleasure. It helps that Robert Pattinson is gorgeous, but everything else constantly works against it.

Let’s start with the good:
I have to start the good off with a congrats to whomever is Taylor Lautner’s personal trainer. That trainer deserves a raise. He/she took a skinny kid in Twilight, whom many doubted could actually carry Jacob, into a hard bodied hunk that made me blush. When Jacob takes his shirt off for the first time the entire audience of women cheered. In one small gesture, they all switched teams. In a sense we should all feel bad since he’s major jail bait.

Which brings me to the acting…while many professional critics are panning the entire movie for lack of acting skills, I have to say that some people acted their booty off and tried to save this film. Ashley Greene, who plays Alice, is a delight to watch in this film. I wanted to see her even more. She has really captured who Alice is and it definitely comes across on screen. Taylor Lautner also made a very believable Jacob. While I’m not switching teams, he not only looked the part, but delivered his lines well and made the audience feel for him. At one point Bella turns away from an attempted kiss by Jacob and someone in the audience yelled, “I want my money back”. Yes, perhaps they haven’t read the book, or maybe they were just happy that at least one actor was showing emotion.

The members of the Wolfpack also are believable in their roles and the Cullen family do a good job of keeping in character.

The last good thing about New Moon is how the Volturri are introduced. The Volturri are like vampire royalty and decide how to hand out punishments to vampires. While we only got some background and a quick look at the Volturri, the characters seemed strong and interesting. Which was quite a change because so much of the movie is uninteresting.

That brings us to the bad…
Unfortunately there is more to hate with New Moon than there is to love. Starting with the way it was filmed. I am unable to understand why Summit Entertainment handed over the reigns to a director that is fairly new and has a list of bombs on his IMDB list. Chris Weitz previously directed The Golden Compass. In an interview on the red carpet, Chris Weitz admitted that he never read the book. His filming style consisted of extreme closeups on the characters’ faces. Because of Kristen’s bad acting (I’ll get to that), a close up only makes it worse. Chris also chose to include many flashbacks to Twilight. Which I’m pretty sure we didn’t need. I highly doubt anyone that goes to see New Moon hasn’t seen Twilight. The flashbacks felt like a waste of time and were totally out of place.

I’m not quite done with my displeasure of Mr. Weitz. He seemed to care so little about New Moon and it’s fans that there are not one, but many continuity problems during the film. The problems are obvious and by not catching them it displays a total lack of respect to the fans assuming that they’ll love anything given to them. IMDB has a good list of the continuity problems and lack of attention to detail. The one that bothered me throughout the film was Kristen’s hair color constantly changing. This is because of her work on her other film where Kristen cut and dyed her hair frequently. The film doesn’t handle it at all and instead we just see her hair constantly and inexplicably change.

I get that the two stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart may be romantically paired in real life, but a real life romance doesn’t always translate to the big screen. These two seemed bored with the movie and with each other. The lines were delivered flat and Robert looked to be forcing interest. A film doesn’t go over well when you’re two lead actors are barely…acting. I saw more acting from Robert Pattinson in the preview for Remember Me than in all of New Moon. The acting in the film is so bad, that most of the audience laughed themselves through the most serious scenes. When Bella tells Jacob that she’ll always choose Edward over him, she looks so painfully bored that you’d think she was choosing drapes.

I do have to confess that New Moon is my least favorite book. But going into the movie, I still had hopes that it would be done well. My original opinion is they should have combined books 2 & 3 together. The pace of New Moon is horrifically slow. While Taylor Lautner surprised me by actually becoming a believable Jacob, Rob and Kristen let down fans by portraying boring versions of Bella and Edward.

In the end, fans have flocked to see New Moon. As a huge fan of Twilight, I will not be purchasing New Moon on Blu-Ray/DVD. It’s my recommendation that we all forget New Moon even happened and start over with Eclipse. Hopefully the next director will have more respect for Twilight fans.

CafePress is celebrating the release of Twilight Saga: New Moon buy giving away gifts using the link above. To receive a free gift enter the code: CPNEWMOONGIFT2 when prompted.

CafePress is partnering with Summit Entertainment to launch an online shop featuring merchandise made by fans for Twilight Saga: New Moon.

The one-of-kind items have sayings like OCD: Obsessive Cullen Disorder, Forget a prince on a horse, I want a Vampire in a Volvo, What do you mean Edward isn’t real?, I’m her Edward, I like my Men cold, dead and sparkley, and many more. I lost some time in just searching through all the unique designs of which there are 75,000 of them.

“Nothing says self-expression more than the uber-creative and thoroughly unique ‘Twilight Saga’ products on CafePress created by the fans themselves,” said CafePress Vice President of Marketing, Amy Maniatis. “It’s rare to see such an enthusiastically engaged group of fans and we think they’ll love the free gift* we have in store for them!”

Twilight Saga:New Moon opens on November 20 and Twilight Saga: Eclipse opens on June 30,2010.

Howard, Bryce

Summit Entertainment is moving fast with their Twilight cast. Eclipse is already set to start filming August 20th and the studio is already making changes. Fan favorite Rachelle Lefevre will not be returning for the third installment of the Twilight series as Victoria. Instead, she will be replaced by Bryce Dallas Howard.

Summit says: “Rachelle brought “Victoria” to great screen life and Bryce will bring a new dimension to the character. The franchise is lucky to have such a talented actress as Bryce coming in to fill the role.”

But on PerezHilton.com Rachelle speaks about how the recast was a surprise even to her!

“I was fully committed to the ‘Twilight’ saga, and to the portrayal of Victoria. I turned down several other film opportunities and, in accordance with my contractual rights, accepted only roles that would involve very short shooting schedules. My commitment to ‘Barney’s Version’ is only ten days. Summit picked up my option for ‘Eclipse.’ Although the production schedule for ‘Eclipse’ is over three months long, Summit said they had a conflict during those ten days and would not accommodate me. Given the length of filming for ‘Eclipse,’ never did I fathom I would lose the role over a 10 day overlap. I was happy with my contract with Summit and was fully prepared to continue to honor it. Summit chose simply to recast the part. I am greatly saddened that I will not get to complete my portrayal of Victoria for the ‘Twilight’ audience. This is a story, a theatrical journey and a character that I truly love and about which I am very passionate. I will be forever grateful to the fan support and loyalty I’ve received since being cast for this role, and I am hurt deeply by Summit’s surprising decision to move on without me. I wish the cast and crew of ‘Eclipse’ only the very best.”

Seems like a rash move on Summit’s part. Bryce Dallas Howard is Ron Howard’s daughter, could that have played a role? What do fans think about this recasting?