Twilight - Read this AFTER you see the movie!

Regarding the movie: I know I would have enjoyed the 

movie more if I hadn't listened to the whole book 

again on Wednesday and Thursday while painting the house.  Having everything so clear in my memory made all the changes and omissions much more glaring.  I felt like the cast was pretty true to the description in the books because the actors are all very beautiful but the makeup made them look much less appealing than they sounded on paper.  I understand that they probably made the lipstick so red on the vampires (not all scenes had the same intensity to the color) in order to further enhance the pallor of their skin but it seems like they could have given the non-vamp residents of Forks Washington a little more color and achieved the same goal.  What don't they sell self-tanner or have a tanning salon in Forks?  I'm usually pretty easy to please so I liked the film okay as a movie.  However, I was bothered that Billy was so young and that he is driving a truck (not underage Jacob) and that the truck is a fancy, shiny, new looking rig (not a rebuilt volkswagen - I think it was supposed to be a rabbit?) Was this so that they didn't offend the Native American population by portraying the Quileute's as less than financially prosperous?  Also for the epilogue - prom - Bella is supposed to be wearing a stiletto heel on her good foot that is "held on by ribbons" and instead it's a converse sneaker, Edward is supposed to be wearing black - a tuxedo I believe (not a nice navy blue suit with a regular tie) - and why is Bella wearing knee length lace-edged leggings which hang out from under her dress?  That was just odd - not at all what someone would wear to prom (even if they disdain fashion as Bella's character does in the books) especially considering that Alice was supposed to have dressed Bella up in high-fashion gear from Paris.  These are corrections that wouldn't have added any extra time to the movie so why make these mistakes?

  

I think everyone expects that when a book graces the silver screen there will be changes because you can't get 500 pages of detail and content into 2 hours but I felt like somethings were changed out of caprice rather than necessity.  Also the whole glittery skin in the sun didn't look right to me.  I was picturing more beams of sunlight bouncing off Edward in a somewhat blinding fashion (too beautiful to look at - burn your eyes out - sun at noonday)  - more heavenly visitor in flavor.  To me it looked almost fuzzy or furry and sometimes even like a sickly sweat (Kaari said it looked a little like sparkly dryer lint).  "Beautiful" was not the adjective that came to mind.  I kind of felt like they probably rushed the production of the movie so that they could take advantage of the tidal wave of hysteria surrounding the books.  It felt like the fine-tuning wasn't there for some things.  For instance... "do you wear contacts?" answer "no" and then you see a close up of Edward's eyes later on and you can see a contact - no time to airbrush?  My, my, we are in a hurry!

I think I'll watch it again - in several months - when it's at the dollar movies and I've forgotten most of the details from the book.  It was cool to see Stephanie Meyer sitting in the diner getting something to eat.  How surreal would that be Steven?  You write a book and then you get to physically enter the world you created in the movie version.  Imagine watching yourself on-screen at the movies inside "Silver Eyes" - totally AwEsOMe DudE!!

I really hope I didn't ruin anything for anyone else.